Working while I wait

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 on building my jig table until then.

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Gear Legs

Last updated November 8th, 2022!? Time sure gets away from you sometimes, doesn't it. Woof.. A lot of time was spend figuring out main landing gear legs. The first step was taking the info from the Piper drawings and laying out the gear v's full size on my table, then jigging the parts in place. This is what we're building. The left side of the picture would be facing the front of the aircraft. And here's the jig laid out on my table. The nearer jig sets the relationship between the forward tube and the axle. The farther jig aligns the forward and rear tube as well as the bushings on which the gear leg will pivot. With the jigs laid out it's time to manufacture parts. First came the pivot bushings, and they were a bit of a process. First the little U-shaped piece of metal that holds the bushing needs to get bent to shape. I made a little die the right size to bend the material in my vice. After the U is bent it then gets a notch ground out to fit around the...

Fittings. How fitting.

Not much has happened on the Ace this year. The winter was long and spring has been very cold, so I spent a long time waiting for the garage to warm up. Now that there's a little heat down there I've been making some headway on the next step of my wing build: fittings. I copied the parts off the plans into CAD and then printed them onto cardstock to use as patterns when laying fittings out on the steel stock. First I tackled the brackets that will hold the pulleys for the aileron cables. I have a lot of extra material in case I had to remake these. The next step was to bend up my fittings. There is one fitting that mounts to the forward side of the strut which gets bent to a 90° angle. The fitting which mounts to the aft side of the spar gets bent at about an 85° angle. I forget the exact number, but don't feel like looking it up at the moment. Next I cut out the aileron control horns. My Harbor Freight porta-band chucked into my vice works well for cutting th...

10 months in under 10 minutes.

I don't feel like going into depth on every little aspect of work I've done over the last 10 months, so I'll hit the highlights and if anyone has questions, feel free to comment and I'll elaborate. As the year started the garage was cold. With a propane heater it would get warm enough to work for a few hours, but because 4130 steel is an air-tempered alloy, it needs to be sufficiently warm out for welding. Long story short; I can't weld, so I make parts. I plugged away making little bits so I can use them when it comes time to build a new assembly. The landing gear legs and spring struts have metal straps to reinforce the bushings in the ends. I knocked these out in a couple days after work. Likewise, the tabs that will become door hinges and the fittings for the tailwheel were cut, drilled, and deburred. As it warmed up and I got an order of laser-cut parts the aileron control arm and pulley brackets were welded to the torque tube for the control stick. I also cu...

Aviation Coming Eventually

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