January Woorkbench: plexiglass flight stand bases

[Larry R.]

I recently purchased online a pack of 2mm plexiglass sheets that are 5" X 7". They are intended to replace glass in photo frames, but I thought I might be able to make flight bases stands from them. There are five sheets in the pack. I can make five bases from each sheet for a cost of about $0.40 a piece.

The plexiglass sheets came with brown paper on both sides which made it easy for me to draw the flight stand bases.



Cutting the plexiglass sheets to size is an easy matter. A steel straight edge and a utility knife is all that is needed. Scoring the material repeatedly, ten times, then snapping the score line produces a clean edge.



I use 3/16" styrene tubing for the flight stand peg, so I drilled the same size hole in the base. The etching I accomplished with a hobby knife.



The complete process takes a few minutes. Note I moved the position of the arrow on the base.

[CrashCraig]

Very nice job Larry!

[Teaticket]

Nice work Larry. Great to see the innovation created on this site.

[Flying Helmut]

Excellent!

Great result

[flash]

Well done, Larry, good job

[Jager]

Nice work, Larry.
My attempts to do this have been miserable failures.

Karl

[camel crew]

Well done that man

[BobP]

People here always come up with some great ideas.

[milcoll73]

nice work Larry! tried my hand at cutting some bases from some old Plexiglas id accumulated over the years. using some thicker plexi for bomber bases it took 3 trys to get a usable, but still flawed base. i had a bit of trouble cutting it with my dremmel as i could cut straight on so the edge ended up with a bit of a downslope. then, despite having a sizable pilot hole, the bit meandered out of center. had to hand drill a smaller hole all the way through and then move up to larger and larger bits.

[Larry R.]

The 2mm plexiglas snapped cleanly after ten or twelve passes with a sharp utility knife (or box cutter). I may eventually try 3mm material for bomber bases. Initially, I thought I'd cut the pieces slightly over sized, then clean up with sand paper. But it turned out that the edges snapped pretty clean, so very little sanding was needed.