The sheet steele parts are done. The large tube has been cut and drilled. The jig for the windshield frame has been constructed and parts are starting to be fitted into place in it.
These are the finished sheet steele pieces for the windshield frame that were shown in my last post as a a piece of sheet with a bunch of holes drilled in it. I cut them out mostly with my Dremel tool, but finished up using my trusty old hacksaw. Once the parts were cut out I used a file to deburr the edges.
Two of the pieces have bends but I don’t have a metal break. I put each of them in my vice and carefully applied pressure to make the bend. I started with finger pressue until I had about a 20 degree bend, then I used a 2×2 and a hammer to GENTLY tap the tab to a right angle. It seemed to work ok and when I was done I checked the finished angle with a square and it was very close to perfect.
The windsheild frame jig is built from 1/2″ plywood and some fir backing pieces to screw things to in order to keep everything in place. This is used to hold the various parts in position until they are all tack welded together. Once the tack welding is complete the jig will be disassembled to allow access to all sides of each joint. Once all the parts are cut and fitted I will cut the lower back corners off of the sides to make it flatter for transport.
The top windshield frame tube connects the front wing spars together. A 5/16″ bolt goes through the front spar brackets and a 7/16″ tube that goes through holes drilled in the top tube. This is how I drilled the holes for these bolts in this tube. Essentially this picture shows the drilling jig that I used.
I cut the tube to length and deburred the ends. Then I screwed the blocks on the jig on one side of the tube. Then I put a 3/4″ boart on the other side of the tube and used that as a straight edge to draw a line the length of the tube with a fine point sharpy. Next I made a cross mark 20mm from each end of the tube which is the location of the cross tubes and center punched the location.
The holes are required to be exactly throught the center of the tube so that both wings can be bolted onto the plane at the same angle. So I started by using the extra tube that I cut off off to test my jig. I drilled a pilot hole first and verified that it was being drilled exactly through the center of the tube and to verify that it was perpendicular to the length of the tube. Once I was satisfied that my jig was holding thing properly, I drilled the pilot holes in the top tube. When the pilot holes were done I put a 7/16″ drill in the drill press, repositioned the jig to allow for the longer drill and drilled the finished holes.
After deburring the holes and verifying that the cross tube could be inserted into place, I slid the top tube into the windshield frame jig. I pushed it through the hole in one side piece, then installed the two sheet steele pieces with the bends. I was very careful to orient the pieces correctly according to the plans. Then I pushed the tube through the other jig end.
Now I only have to cut and fit the four 5/8″ tubes that make up the rest of the windshield frame. Oh, and the two cross tubes for the wing attachments.
It is seven months until Christmas! Do you have your shopping done? I don’t. However, progress has been made on Sawdust and I am getting excited.
The days have been cool and rainy, so I have been taking the glue into the house at night so it will be at room temperature when I am ready to glue. This has worked quited nicely and now both sides have been completed. The current project is getting the pieces and the jig for the windshield frame ready for our my brother in law to weld.
So, on to the pictures and commentary:
Here I am sitting in the cockpit of Sawdust making airplane noises. This is the left side of the fuselage. The right side is complete now, too. Both of the sides are now haning on the south wall of the garage.
Here is another view of the left side with the pilot installed. At this point things are still pretty much virtual, but progress is being made. The exciting part about the sides is that they are identical when hung side by side. Except for the left/right differences, that is.
There are a couple of things that still need to be done on the sides before the fuselage can be assembled. The side window openings need to be cut, the leading edge of the airfoil shape needs to be trimmed, and the edges need to be sanded. I intentionally waited until now to cut the window openings because I wanted to be sure that they were cut exactly the same. I will clamp the sides together and cut both openings at the same time. The leading edge mainly needs to be sanded to shape, so I will do both sides at the same time by clamping them together and marking the outline that I will need to follow.
The other thing on the sides is that I need to drill the hole for the top pipe of the windshield frame to go through on each side.
The windshield frame is the next component to build. This assembly is made from 4130 steele and connects the leading wing spars to the engine mount. I built a jig to keep the parts positioned while they are tack welded. Most of the parts are made from steele tubing, but there are a few that are made from sheet steele.
The sheet steele parts needed to have some holes drilled in them. The larger holes are 1 3/8″ diameter and the smaller ones are 13/64″ (#11). I started by making tagboard templates of the parts, then I taped them to the steele and center punched the hole locations and traced around the template so I will know where to cut the steele. Then I drilled pilot holes at each hole location, then I drilled all the #11 holes. I purchased a bimetal hole saw to “drill” the large holes. Before drilling the large holes I fastened the steele sheet to a 2×6 with a few screws.
Was my last post really in December? Wow! Time flies regardless of whether one is having fun or not. Oh, yeah, I remember now. I was having problems inserting pictures, so I gave up posting for a while. I will try it again and see what happens.
Winter was not a productive time for Sawdust. However, spring is doing much better. I now have two fuselage sides and the metal for the windshield frame. Let’s see if I can get a picture inserted here.
Well, what about that! It worked!
Ok, so there is what I have accomplished so far this year. Both sides are in one piece, but only have their gussets on one side. I am now ready to glue the gussets to the other side of each fuselage side.
A bit of explanation about the picture: The fuselage side that is hanging up is the right side of the fuselage. The one sitting on the floor is the left side of the fuselage. The view is the outside of both sides.
If you look in toward the top of the left half of the picture you can see the right wing hanging from the cieling. There is just enough clearance between the garage door and the cieling to allow the wings to be hung there. However, the lights are positioned such that I cannot install the alerons and still hang the wings. I am going to have to look for a larger workshop pretty soon.
Although things have not been progressing very quickly in the past couple of months, I thought I would at least get one last post in this year. So here is a quick status.
Both wings are now hanging from the garage ceiling.
Just a little work has begun on the horizontal tail surfaces. I cut the stringers for the horizontal stabilizer and elevator. Work has commenced to the point where I now need to plane down some wood for filler blocks.
Christmas was ok. The weather cooperated. The roads were pretty good and we got some fresh snow while we were there. Next week we are going to be back on the road, but going south this time. When we get back home I am going to start working on the plane again.
Work is continuing on the right wing. There sure are a lot of parts to cut and fit once the wing starts looking like a wing!
I have glued all the ribs in place on both sides of both spars. The wing still looks the same as the pictures in my last post, but there are more gussets. Ok, so here is what it looks like.
I think that will be the only picture that I post this time. I need to download a few more. However, to bring things up to date, The wing in the picture is now hanging from the ceiling in my garage and the left wing now looks very much like what is in the picture, only the other way around.
The weather has decided that it is time for fall and the normal daily temperatures don’t reach the point where gluing is a reasonable activity on a regular basis. Therefore, I am going to move things back to the basement and start working on smaller assemblies in preparation for assembling the fuselage next summer.
Maybe I will get more time to take pictures and write posts for this blog.
Well, just the right one for now. However, all the spars are complete and ready for ribs. So, here it is from the root end:
From the wing tip end:
The ribs are not glued in place yet. They have just been slid onto the spars. But you get the idea and it looks quite impressive. My wife is impressed anyway.
Lets go back to a bit earlier and take a look at some of the details.
Here are the finished spars:
Well, three of the four. All four of the spars were done and had all of the holes drilled except for the root end holes for the fittings. At the time of this writing, all the hole have been drilled and the spars are sanded and ready to have the ribs glued to them.
Since all the ribs were built as if the spar was the same thickness throughout its full length, I glued in 2mm plywood fillers at all the locations where the ribs would be located.
This shows what I did at the places where the strapping clamps are located. At these locations I cut a single piece of plywood that covered both of the filler blocks. My reasoning was that it would be a good idea to tie the drag bracing together at least a little and this seemed to be a simple way to do it.
Each of the ribs fit just perfectly. The fit was nice a snug, but was still loose enough to allow the ribs to be slid on without too much trouble. Of course, the rib pieces just in front of an behind the front spar have not been glued yet. I will glue them into position on the front of the spar and then glue gussets on each side to connect them to the ribs. I think it will keep me busy for the rest of the summer.
Prior to moving down to Dallas, TX this spring, I started building a couple of guitars… an archtop in the Benedetto-style, and an acoustic, which is my take on the Martin OM. While we wait for our house in Minnesota to sell, we’re living in an apartment, and my tools are in storage… this doesn’t allow me to continue on my guitar projects, so in the meantime, I thought I’d do some repair work on a couple of guitars that I’ve owned for some time.
First up is an Epiphone EA-250, which I bought in 1994 or 1995 from a classmate in the same Audio Recording and Live Sound Reinforcement degree track I took at the Hutchinson (MN) Technical College right out of high school.
I bought the guitar for a small sum, as the body and sides had separated near the neck joint. It needs to have that repair done, along with a refret (all of the frets are flat for nearly their full width, and there is not enough height left to round them). At the same time, I’m going to probably put on a new nut, and re-fit the bridge to the body.
Here’s a photo (taken from the web) of a complete EA-250:
The primary issue with my EA-250, is that near the neck joint (note, this is an early 1970’s model, with a bolt-on neck), the top has separated from the sides. It looks like string tension has also sort-of “rotated” or pulled the neck block, where the neck bolts on, back towards the bridge, thus giving it ridiculously high action.
This must have been the case for quite a while, as even after removing the neck for many months, it has not returned to it’s normal location. I’m going to try to remedy this slowly with some heat, humidity, clamps, and (GENTLE!) reverse stress over the next days/weeks. I’m still coming up with a plan of action, and need to procure some new clamps (my good ones are all in storage) to use.
Here are some detailed photos of the problems:
As you can see, I’ve already removed the frets, and although I don’t have a photo yet, Emmett (my two-year old son) and I have carefully adjusted the truss-rod to flatten the neck, and sanded it down smooth (the Mother-of-Pearl inlays had been protruding, as the rosewood fretboard shrunk with lack of humidity and age, along with divots from hard playing for many years).
Here you can clearly see the separation between the top of the body, and the sides, near the neck joint. In reality (although it doesn’t show well in these photos) the sides (where they meet the top) have been pulled back towards the bridge about 1/8-3/16 of an inch!
A top view of the same, here you can see the crack in the top, between the neck and the first pickup opening, also, the mis-shaped pickup opening is not an illusion, the top wood has been curved back into the opening over time, so the pickup no longer mounts properly!
So, I have my work cut out for me, but it should be a fun project, and from what I’ve read, this is a really good playing, good sounding guitar, if it’s set up properly.
Things are working again, thanks to my son, Ben. So I thought I would post a quick update about the plane and my trip to AirVenture. The AirVenture pictures are at the bottom, so if you are impatient, or get bored with my narrative, you can just scroll down to the good stuff.
There is not much happening on the plane right now because “we” are preparing the garage for the garage sale that my wife has scheduled for August 14th. However, I have the spars laid out in the basement and have been busy marking the locations of the ribs and fittings on them. I have figured out what materials I will need to complete the wings and have ordered them. These materials include the metal for the wing root fittings and drag/antidrag bracing, the strut and jury strut fittings, and the 1/8″ and 1/4″ plywood for the root end of the spars.
While at AirVenture I ordered some dehydrator plugs for the engine. After spending a bunch of money on the engine, I don’t want it to end up having it rust in place before I can mount it on the plane and run it.
AirVenture was GREAT!!!
This was my very first trip to Oshkosh and AirVenture and, even though I had read lots about it and watched a bunch of videos about it, I was not prepared for the experience. It is much bigger than I could ever have imagined. The number of airplanes was overwhelming! The EAA did a great job of organization and planning and compensated for the wet conditions very well.
AirVenture was WET.
We left Kearney as soon as I could get off of work on Friday, July 23rd. I had to pick up three of the guys from our local EAA chapter, so we didn’t really hit the road until about 7:00 pm. We drove all night and pulled into the main gate at about 8:00 am. The guy at the gate took a look at my pop-up camper and said that it was just small enough to be allowed in. We got checked in and headed for the highest ground that we could find. The camp site that we got was still very soggy, but it was close to the restrooms, showers and the bus stop.
After setting up camp we walked over to the bus stop, hopped on a bus and headed for the AirVenture grounds. Saturday was a setup day, so there was no admission required and we did not need to wear wrist bands. I thought there were a lot of airplanes along the flight line, but the guys that had been there before said that there were hardly any. As the week progressed and things dried out, thousands of additional airplanes arrived and filled the flight line. I was told that many planes were redirected to other airports to wait until the ground dried enough to support them.
The people attending AirVenture are the best! We did not have to worry about having our camp site invaded or molested. I even forgot to lock up the truck a couple of times and nothing was disturbed. Everyone was careful to keep things clean and we never saw any litter around the AirVenture grounds or the camping areas.
Have you ever gone on a trip and not forgotten something? I forgot my pillow! After driving all night, we all ended up sleeping for a while Saturday afternoon. In the late afternoon we we got up and decided that it would be nice to get some supper. We walked over to the bus stop and got on a bus that had a sign on it saying it was going to Target and Pick and Save. When we got to the bus park (where you could switch buses or walk to the main gate) we decided to stay on and see where it went. We go to the drop off point and saw a Fazzolie’s(sp?), so we walked over and had dinner there. Afterward I stopped at Target and got a pillow and pillow cases. That really helped me to sleep well the rest of the week.
Each morning I would sit down with the printout of all the available activities and decide what I wanted to try to take in for the day. I would write up a list and head out. The first stop was always the Tall Pines Cafe for breakfast. They had sausage, pancakes, French toast, biscuits and gravy, orange juice, fruit cups, and milk or coffee for $7.00. The Tall Pines is located at the south end of the main runway by the ultralites. It was a fun place to eat and watch all the airplanes. After breakfast we would head out to see what was happening.
Sunday was a walk around overview of AirVenture and an orientation to the grounds. In the afternoon I caught the bus over to the museum and enjoyed a few hours of cool investigation of the exhibits. The EAA Museum is worth going to even if you do it at a time other than AirVenture.
Monday morning I wanted to check out some of the fabric covering demonstrations. I was primarily looking for techniques and ideas about how to install the fabric. I planned to start by watching the demo at the Superflite tent, but was surprised to find that it was a hands on workshop instead of a demo. The workshop was divided up into two parts: morning was gluing the fabric to the structure and heat shrinking it; afternoon was rib stitching and application of tapes. In all it was a lot of fun and I learned a lot, too.
Monday evening was the Chicago concert. It was pretty much standing room only, especially if you wanted to see the group. I watched for a while, then headed back to camp.
Tuesday morning I was scheduled to do some fashion modeling for the EAA catalog. An email had gone out to members a couple of weeks before AirVenture looking for EAA members who would like to model EAA merchandise for the upcoming catalog. I responded and was accepted. So about 9:30 we walked out to the flight line and found some interesting airplanes to use as background for the pictures. There were about six of us in our group and they did several groups through the week. The temperature was about 95F and the humidity had to be at least 98%. The sun was shining and they handed me a bomber jacket. The photographer was good and got my pictures done quickly, so I didn’t have to wear the jacket very long. It is a nice jacket and I may have to get one for this winter. The catalog is supposed to come out in October. I will let you know when it is available.
Late Wednesday afternoon I attended the EAA Chapter Presidents reception at the Ford hanger. This is an annual event and there were about 600 chapters represented there. Ford sponsors the reception and provides food and beverages. Also attending the reception were Tom Poberezny, Captain Sully, Edsel Ford II and Kurt Russell. I stayed for a while, then headed back to the camp to go to dinner with the rest of they guys.
Just as we were finishing up our meal I got a phone call from work letting me know that the dev database was acting up and needed my attention. The EAA had installed about 50 wireless access points around the campground, so internet access was pretty good. However, the battery on my laptop had drained down to the point where I needed to plug it in. The showers have mirrors and outlets around the outside, so I grabbed my camp chair and hiked up to the showers, plugged in and got connected. It took only a few minutes to fix the issue and figure out what caused it. Things have been good since.
Thursday was our day to drive home. We were up about 5:00 and pulled out of Camp Scholler at 6:00. I pulled into the driveway at home at 9:00 pm. It was a long day, but a good drive. It was very good to be home again.
After reading all of this, I think you deserve to see at least a few pictures from AirVenture. Therefore, here are some of the things that I saw.
This is a DC 7B airliner.
This is the only privately owned Harrier in the world. It is owned by Art Nall and was flown at one of the AirVenture airshows. The airshows started about 3:00pm each afternoon. I really liked the warbirds. The aerobatic demonstrations were good, but got sort of repetitious after a while.
Here is the Terafugia prototype. This is a vehicle that can be driven on the highway, or flown from an airport. It is supposed to enable people to drive from their house to the airport, fly to another airport, then drive to their final destination. I wonder how the TSA is going to deal with them?
This is Goliath. He is an Erickson heavy lift helicopter. He was used to fly in the new Ford Explorer so it could be unveiled at the show. That happened just before the Chicago concert.
Here is a picture of some of the more impressive people who attended the EAA Chapter Presidents’ Reception. On the left is Tom Poberezny. In the center is Edsel Ford II. On the right is Captain Sully was the pilot of the airliner that hit the geese and ended up ditching the plane in the Hudson River. He is now the head of the EAA Young Eagles program.
Anyone who is familiar with Wisconsin legends knows that no major event would be complete without an appearance by Ole & Lena. Ole was having a bit of an issue getting his airplane to fly, but Lena was doing her best at wing walking anyway.
I was notified by Mike Lamb that his virus detection software complains about this site. I apologize for any inconvenience and would like you to know that I have reported the issue to my technical support staff (my son). My son informs me that there is a new version of WordPress available that should fix the issue and he will upgrade as soon as he has an opportunity.
As of this posting the site is now using the new version of WordPress and the latest version of MySQL. He ended up having to upgrade the database in order to accommodate the WordPress upgade.
Now to the news!
Progress has been happening!
All the ribs have been assembled and sanded. The trailing edge gusset slots have been cut and the notches for the leading edge reinforcement strip have been cut.
The wing spars have been reworked and now are using the correct thickness of plywood. The edges need to be sanded and I am working on marking where the ribs will attach and where the holes for attaching the fittings will be located.
The major coup of the summer was the acquisition of an engine! This is a real airplane engine, too. I came across a great deal on a Continental C85-12 with everything. It has two brand new Slick magnetos and harnesses, a starter, a generator, a carburetor with a heat box, the exhaust stacks and heat muffs. AND it cam on an inspection stand! The price was about half what I was estimating it would cost to build up a Corvair engine and just a bit over half of what a VW engine kit would have cost from Great Plains. The only down side is that it did not come with a log book. It was previously owned by an A&P instructor who had one of his classes overhaul it, so it is zero time since major. An A&P friend of mine did a compression test on it before I bought it. The cold compression results were 76, 68, 75, 72.
I suppose some pictures would be appropriate at this point.
This is the engine! It is shown on its stand. The propeller end of the engine is fitted into a prop hub that is bolted to the top of the stand. That means the engine is being stored nose down. I am keeping it under wraps (tarps and bags) to keep the dust off of it. The current plan is to build the fuselage next summer and actually mount the engine next fall.
Here are the ribs. I have them all together in the order that they will be positioned in the wings. The two root ribs still need a bit of work on their noses, but all the others are ready to be fitted to the spars.
This is what the front spars looked like after I cut the 1.5mm plywood web out of them. Pretty rough! I mounted the spars vertically on my sawhorses and used my circular saw to cut them apart. I tried to remove as much of the 1.5mm web as I could, but found that it was very difficult to keep the saw blade perfectly lined up with the plywood. I had to cut in as far as I could from each side, then finish splitting the spars with a hand saw. All together it took about 10 to 15 minutes per spar.
Once the spars were split, I needed to run them through the planer to get a level surface to work with. The first surface had to be prepared to mate with the new 2mm plywood web. When the new web was in place, I had to split things again and prepare the surface to accept replacement fir strips to return the spars to their designed thickness.
This is my precision planer. By using this notched board and clamping its lower end to the workbench, I am able to take cuts of 1/512 of an inch. Because Douglas Fir is prone to splinter and because there are a number of blocks with their grain running perpendicular to the length of the spars, I planed 1/128 of an inch on each pass. That seemed to work quite well although it took a fair amount of time to do the planing.
Here is what the spars look like after planing. There is a lot of difference!
All the spars are now ready to have the ribs fastened to them. However, that will have to wait for a couple of weeks. Tomorrow I am heading to AirVenture! This will be my first time and I am REALLY excited about it!!! Then my wife has scheduled a garage sale for August 14th, so I will need to clean up my work area and get the garage ready for the big sale when I get back from AirVenture. However, wing assembly is expected to commence the week of August 15th.
I have requested an N number for the plane. The FAA will allow builders to reserve an available N number, but it costs a bit. This time it cost $10, but there are some rule changes that are taking effect that will push the cost up more and require that I reapply every three years. I am waiting to get the letter from the FAA approving my request. When I do I will post the N number here.
The airplane also has a name. I have been telling people that I go home at lunch time and “make sawdust”, so I have decided to call the airplane “Sawdust”. Now I need to find a font and make a couple of decals with the name on them to fasten to the sides of the cowl.
For people wanting to see another Maranda in progress, check out Randy Holland’s site: http://www.mywoodenairplane.com. He does a much better job of keeping his site up to date and has great pictures. Randy is just a bit ahead of where I am and has been a great encouragement and a wonderful resource when I have questions.
WOW! This is the first I have posted since November?! Well, all I have to say in my defense is that I have been busy and I am making progress. As of this posting, the vertical fin and rudder are DONE! Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of them. In fact, this is just going to be a short text entry.
Like I said, the fin and rudder are done. I may do a bit of sanding on them before I cover them, but that will probably wait for awhile.
The leading edge of the rudder and the tops of the rudder and fin have balsa blocks glued to them which were then shaped with a block plane and sandpaper to make them look good. Then everything was sealed with a fairly heavy coat of sanding sealer.
I used the Stewart Systems sanding sealer and sealer applied with foam brushes. This worked pretty well, but next time I am going to try some bristle brushes instead. The foam brushes didn’t hold up very well and when they started breaking down they left little chunks of black foam sticking to the finish. That is one of the reasons that I expect to sand the surfaces before I cover them.
The Stewart Systems sealers are really nice to work with! They are water born, so they are very eco-friendly, they have no smell and they clean up with water. These are not inexpensive, but I think I will continue to use them because of the lack of odor and the easy clean up. I bought two versions of the sealer. The sanding sealer is used first to seal the wood and fill the grain, then the sealer is used as a second coat to make things look good. It does a very nice job.
Since summer is coming, I thought it would be a good idea to move my work area to the garage and work on something a bit larger, like the wings. I grabbed a bunch of the ribs that I had assembled and went to work sanding them. When I started counting them I found out that I didn’t have as many as I thought I did, so I have gone back to building ribs for the past couple of weeks. At this point I have to build two more short ribs, but I have all the parts cut and it is just to do the gluing.
When the ribs are assembled, I will take them to the garage and go about sanding them. I have decided that I will put some small boards through some of the openings and clamp them together as a single group, then use my belt sander to smooth them down and to the proper shape. Once that is done I will need to cut a notch in the nose of each rib for the leading edge cap strip to go into. I will also need to cut the trailing edges all the same and cut a notch to accept the gussets that will hold the trailing edge strip to the ribs.
I made a mistake when I built the spars! Somehow I got a bit mixed up and used 1.5mm plywood instead of the 2mm plywood called for in the plans. The width is not so much of an issue as is the number of plies in each. The 1.5mm plywood has 3 plies while the 2mm plywood has 5 plies. This will mean that I will have to split the front spars and remove the old plywood, then replace it with thicker plywood. The easiest way to do this is to use the planer to remove the plywood down to the fir. Because this may result in removing a bit of the fir, I am planning to use 3mm plywood for the webs.
Well, it looks like I have my summer work cut out for me. Hopefully, I will still be able to update this blog periodically and include some pictures.
