Center Between Two Holes
Here I am stuck in the middle with you.
On more than one occasion, I’ve watched someone trying to measure the center between two holes by eyeballing the empty space and guessing the exact center. The other day this happened again and he was a millimeter off when we measured it. So…
I have decided to go ahead and mention this for the 10% (or more?) that don’t realize this simple fact:
The distance between the centers of two like holes is the same as the distance between the like edges.
To further illustrate, check out this not-to-scale sketch:
The red arrow and the green arrow are the same length. This is further illustrated in the two photos in the montage at the top of this tip.
An only slightly trickier problem is finding the center between different-sized holes. A great example are root ribs where the two holes are often of different diameters. But it’s still not that difficult. All you need to do is sum the diameter of each hole (blue and red), divide by two and add the distance between inside edges (orange) to get the exact distance between centers as shown (purple).
That’s it. The shortest, easiest and maybe most useful tip yet! Thanks for reading and if there is a particular tip you would like to see, please consider leaving a comment in the Responses section. You’ll find it if you click the little 💬 below.
©2023 Tom Broeski
Resources
- Stuck in the Middle with You by Stealers Wheel (1978) — If you know, you know.
- Tom’s Tips — The complete compendium as presented on the pages of the New RC Soaring Digest.
All images by the author. Read the next article in this issue, return to the previous article in this issue or go to the table of contents. A PDF version of this article, or the entire issue, is available upon request.
