Aviation Coming Eventually

 With the wings pretty much wrapped up it was time to start in earnest on the metal portions of the build. I figured it would be best to start small and work my way up to the fuselage. This meant starting on the tail surfaces. Before I could do that, however, I needed a large, flat, level surface to lay everything out on. Since the fuselage will also need a large, flat, level surface to build on and I don't want to build two tables, the jig table will be quite large. How large? 4 feet wide and 14.5 feet long. This will give me enough room to lay out the full fuselage with jig blocks around the edges and still have space to walk around one end of the table. Once the fuselage is tack welded I won't need the full 14+ feet of table, so I built it to be reconfigured into a smaller, 4x8 foot table for jigging out things like landing gear. Apparently I didn't take any pictures of the table, but here is the CAD drawing I made for it. The frame is made from 2x4. There is a pair of ...

The last rib on the right wing has been replaced and varnished with the wingtip bow installed for the last time. The pulley guards still need paint, but then they'll be done as well. The wings have both been hauled to the ceiling and extra support-ropes were added just in case one of the straps decides to give out for some reason. Fuselage tubing has been ordered, but Aircraft Spruce is short on stock so I'll have to wait a few weeks before they can ship it out to me. In the meantime I started making fittings for the fuselage. All of the landing gear and strut brackets are cut, as are the control horns for the elevator and rudder. I made up some 1" washers out of .090 4130 sheet which will probably get welded to the appropriate gear fittings tomorrow. After that I can stow the fittings away while I start work on the fuselage jig. Cheynne is going to try to sell off some of the mechanics tools she's inherited to make a little more room in the garage. I'll hold off o...

Hoo Boy... has it been a long time... Where did I leave off? Bending wingtip bows, that was 145 shop hours ago! All the wing fittings were hung on a PVC paint rack. I wrapped a cheap pop-up canopy as a spray booth and sprayed the fittings with a 2-part epoxy primer. This was my first time spraying with this specific setup and there was some learning that needed to happen. A few brush touchups were necessary, but all in all it turned out alright, and the next spraying will be better. The oak cable guides from quite some time earlier were varnished, and while I had varnish mixed I masked off the spars and varnished everywhere that wasn't going to have something glued to it. In the future, I think I would push this step back and varnish everything at once. The right wing was then assembled, squared up, and the ribs epoxied in place. I mocked up the drag wires with string and measured each bay to get final lengths for the drag wires. I forgot to write down the lengths used in ...