Carlson Skunk Works

October 9th, 2017

AMF 14H MARANDA SN:1026 Making Sawdust October 9th, 2017

Posted by Roger in news

In the past month or two things have progressed to the point where bolts can be installed permanently. YEAH!!!

That means that the engine has been removed, the firewall has been formed, and the firewall is now in place. That also means that there are only a few pictures to deal with.

The engine and engine mount were removed along with everything else on the front of the fuselage.

I obtained a piece of sheet steel for the firewall and drilled a couple of holes so that it could be hung on the front of the fuselage on the top bolts for mounting the engine mount. To give a bit of backing for drilling holes and bending the edges of the firewall, I cut a piece of 1/2 inch plywood and hung it on the top bolts as well.

I bent the firewall metal around the plywood. The curve on the upper edge caused the metal to wrinkle.

Ben came to the rescue and welded up a set of fluting pliers from an old vice grips and some 1/4″ rod. This allowed me to insert some “controlled” wrinkles into the firewall top edge.

When that was done and the firewall looked pretty good, I took it off of the plane and spray pained the back of it with high temp primer. This primer is supposed to be good to 2000 degrees. While the paint dried I sprayed the front of the front bulkhead with Elmer’s spray adhesive, then applied FiberFrax to the wood. I finished up by putting the firewall back in place.

While I was working on the firewall, Emmett and his friend Gannon went to work and applied sealer to all the wood parts that I had been working on for the past year. These included the mount for the fuel tank, the seat parts and the baggage compartment parts.

Now I can focus on the final mounting of parts in preparation for covering the fuselage.

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