Carlson Skunk Works

We have gusset!!! At this time just one, but that means the next step of this project is under way.

Last night I cut the remainder of the spruce pieces for the ribs. My sockpile of parts looks like this:

And another view:

Next I moved on to my scarfing sander. Here is the vacuum cleaner that I am going to pull the motor out of:

Here is the vacuum after I freed the motor from it:

Here are the parts that I will keep and build the scarfing sander out of:

The only issue that I ran into was that when I tried to take the fan off of the motor I didn’t see that the nut used left hand threads and stripped the nut. Now I will have to work a bit harder to get the fan assembly off of the motor. I didn’t have the time or inclination to work on this issue last night, so I proceeded on to cutting gussets.

Cutting gussets should be a fairly easy issue, but I think I will need another sheet of plywood to finish the ribs. I will be able to tell more after I cut a few more gussets. I started with the gussets for the nose of the ribs. I used a spray adhesive to glue a photo copy of the rib nose to a piece of tag board, then cut a pattern from that. Then I cut a strip of plywood 75mm wide. I traced my pattern onto the plywood and nested the pieces to make the best use of the plywood. I was able to get about 24 rib nose gussets from one strip of plywood.

I am using a utility knife to cut the plywood. After all the plywood is only 1mm thick. It takes a couple of passes foir the cut to make it all the way through, but the cut is clean and there is no waste in the form of sawdust. It is a bit tricky to cut the curves on the back of the nose gussets. Making several passes with the knife and being careful seems to do the trick. I was careful to allow a bit extra around the nose of the gussets to ensure that they will cover all of the area that they are designed to cover.

Next week I will be out of town, so I don’t know if I will be able to make much progress if any. I am toying with the idea of taking the plywood with me. If I cut the strips ahead of time and take them with me I shouldn’t draw too much attention bringing it into the hotel 😉