Carlson Skunk Works

February 11th, 2013

AMF 14H MARANDA SN:1026 Making Sawdust February 11, 2013

Posted by Roger in AMF 14H Maranda SN1026, news

FINALLY!!! Back to work on Sawdust and making some progress.

This fall and winter have had me focusing my time and efforts on other projects and activities, so very little was accomplished on Sawdust since September. The main focus was making Christmas and birthday gifts for family and friends. I also made a quick trip to Minnesota to check up on my parents. Immediately after Christmas (December 26th to be exact) I hopped in the truck and drove to Dallas to spend a few days with my son and his family.

My father has become very hard of hearing and has not been able to use the telephone for the past six years or so. I found that there are special phones available where the person who has hearing difficulties can talk and hear the voice of the person they are talking to, but the words of the person on the other end are transcribed and displayed on a small screen. The transcription is done “real time”. The transcription service is paid for by a line item on everyone’s phone bills. Therefore, Mom & Dad have been paying for this service for a long time without using it and all of their children, friends and strangers have been chipping in as well. Dad is now able to call me and visit any time he wants. It is a pretty neat gadget and I am looking forward to seeing it when I am there next time.

My second son was born the day after Christmas and now lives in Dallas with his wife and son. I had some vacation that I needed to use up, so early the day after Christmas I headed south. The trip went well even though there were some interesting parking configurations along the freeway between Oklahoma City and Dallas. Anyway, I was able to have dinner with Ben and his family to celebrate his birthday. The next day I helped my grandson build a snowman. There is something a bit wrong about having to drive ten hours south in order to have enough snow to build a snowman.

When I got back home I was able to get back into the building mode and have made some progress on Sawdust. The focus over the winter is on the horizontal control surfaces. The first object to work on is the horizontal stabilizer. Things are moving along quite nicely. The attached pictures show where things stood as of this morning. I need to sand it to get the nose ribs and leading edge to blend nicely to the main ribs. I also need to sand the spar at the trailing edge to blend it to the shape of the ribs. Then I will need to lay out and glue up the top and bottom skins.

I need to make a list of bolts and get them ordered. I can’t put both skins on this until the fittings have been bolted into place. Of course, the interior needs to be sealed before the bolts can be installed. There are lots of little gotchas that one needs to be aware of.

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