Tonight, I got the vertical stabilizer spar caps completed. This was my redemption from night one where I buggered up the spar AND caps. This felt good to achieve! It was also pretty fun to do for the second time because it went so much more smoothly. I can understand now why someone would do […]
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Tonight I only had an hour or so, and I decided to just go out to “cleanup the shop”. I did that, but while I was at it, I figured I’d lay out the parts needed to restart the vertical stabilizer. The first time I tried it, I drilled the wrong size holes in the […]
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Day 25: Before I talk about tonight’s work, I have to go back to a day in September when Dylan stopped by to help out. That day, we took apart the mostly assembled horizontal stabilizer and did A LOT of deburring. Dylan was a huge help with this work, and did most of it. I […]
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It’s been a busy week and I have not gotten much time in the garage. Today, while chatting with my Dad in the evening, I was sticking clecos into holes, and kinda accidentally put all the pieces together without the skins. It was good to see how things line up. I can see how it […]
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With my woodwork done (good enough), it’s time to get back to the metalwork! I found that a bunch of the ribs and noses still needed work. Lots of deburring and radiusing of parts. This was a new thing for me and caused a bit of confusion. The instructions say to radius to nose ribs […]
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The instructions said… “Don’t waste time making these perfect”. …well… CHECK PLUS! I had my lines all drawn and I was feeling pretty good about my plan. Right before I cut, I realized that I needed to have room for the skin to extend beyond the nose ribs, so I extended my awkwardly flat drawing […]
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Today I prepared the ribs for the horizontal stabilizer spar. It was my first time using fluting pliers. I took the advise of Paul Dye and did them while watching TV! I also took some time to practice making precise holes with my drill press. I tried with and without a punch, and with and […]
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Tonight I did the other half of last nights job with the spar caps. I drilled all the #40 holes between the cap flange and spar flange. I used a generous amount of clamps to make sure the cap sat square while drilling, and put in a few clecos as I went along. The next […]
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Last night’s goal was to prepare the spar caps and stringers. I’m getting a bit bolder with the bandsaw and cutting closer. This means less filing and the work goes much quicker. I also came up with what I think is the ideal clamping method for filing down the angles on the caps. With the […]
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Last night I continued on the task of creating horizontal stabilizer brackets. I dug around my shop in search of the best tool for cutting the heavy aluminum. The hacksaw worked well, but I could not help but think that there must be something better. I tried my Dewalt 20v oscillating tool with a metal […]
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