Author: dale

Posted on

Garage prep, chapter three

Yesterday I built a storage rack on the back wall of the garage. I call it the back wall; it’s the “back” only from the perspective of the door from the house to the garage. It’s the side of the last garage space. Anyway… Three 8′ 2x4s and an hour or so with a chop saw, pocket hole jig, glue, and screws, and I had the three wall brackets. I spaced them 32″ apart and screwed them to the wall studs. Each bracket has three 18″ horizontal supports on which I can stack lumber or whatever.

Going through my stock of random left-over lumber from previous projects, one of the things I found was a 1×12 board about 10′ long. I suspect it was left over after disassembling and old Van’s Aircraft shipping crate, though it may have been something else. It’s a pretty crappy board, and I can’t imagine using it for anything else, so I cut it to length and used 67″ of it to screw to the bottom supports as a shelf for shorter stock.

One task remains – finishing up the “gossip bench” – before I can get a work table built and get back to building. I discussed the general plan for the work table with Stu yesterday, I just need to figure out exactly how I want to build it.

Posted on

Garage prep, chapter two

Tool boxes have been swapped, a cabinet moved, more cleaning and organizing done. I’ve made a calculated decision to take a side trip to disassemble, sand, reassemble, and refinish an old “gossip bench” or telephone table that belonged to my wife’s grandmother. It’s been sitting in the garage for many years, rickety and falling apart. The top portion is an enclosed shelf made with a curved piece of plywood with solid beech for the top and bottom – you know, to hold a phone book. The plywood got cracked by something long ago, so I’ll use some new birch plywood and bend it to make a replacement. I figure a week to finish this up, then it can come inside the house for my wife to make a new seat cushion and find a place for it, which she has assured me she can do. As long as it’s not in the garage, I’ll be happy.

Now on to figuring out how to wedge in some wood storage.

Posted on

Garage prep and planning

I’m getting really tired of not being able to get any building done. This has really been driven home for the past few weeks of non-building. During the summer there’s plenty of yard work and other projects to fill int he gaps and keep one from getting bored. When it’s this cold, though, it becomes obvious that something has to be done. Rather than dive into a “just do something, anything” mentality that invariably leads to a big stalled mess, I’ve been taking the time to figure out exactly what the obstacles are and how they can be overcome.

Obviously, one of the biggest factors is space. There wasn’t any. The garage is packed pretty full, but a lot of it is just clutter. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been cleaning things up, putting things away, figuring out what can be tossed, and just generally rearranging things. I have a day or two left to go on the big parts of that effort. Right now I have about half a garage space completely cleared, and will extend that another couple feet as I get rid of some junk that needs to go. I also plan to move the riding mower from the garage to the back patio, and cover it with an all-weather cover I bought for it. I have some rodent repellant balls I’ll use to try and keep mice and squirrels out of there… we’ll see how that works. The balls are strongly scented with peppermint and some other stuff; it’s non-toxic and doesn’t stink. I’ve also got two tool chests that I’m swapping around and getting all of the tools organized. I’m terrible about not putting tools away, and as a result they tend to end up scattered everywhere, and I’m trying to fix that.

The next issue is climate control. It’s a garage. The temperature out there is more moderate than it used to be, since we insulated the walls and ceiling several years ago when the new siding was installed. Still, it gets too hot to work out there during part of the summer, and too cold in the winter. Epoxy won’t cure properly when it’s 40 degrees in the garage, and working in 90-plus heat or refrigerator temps leads to careless and sloppy work. I’ve got a 1500W infrared space heater going out there now to keep it at sweatshirt temperatures just so I can get the cleanup done, but a betters solution is going to be required. I’m looking at installing a ductless mini-split heat pump. That will require a new 220 V circuit installed, and some cabinets will need to move, so as one might imagine it just leads to a stream of new projects and complications. I do have a. plan, though, even if its implementation is not as quick as I’d like. I’m also going to need to seal up the garage doors better than they are — the rubber seals are old and leaky. I suspect we’ll probably end up with new garage doors, which we’ve been wanting for a while anyway.

Then there’s the work table situation. There is none. I’ve been looking at what I’ll need for tables to assemble the upper wings, tail, and fuselage. I have full size prints for everything, so I know that a 3′ wide table will be enough or everything. Wider would be good for wings, but 36″ will cover the distance from the trailing edge to the main spar, so it’s enough. I already know I’ll need at least 10′ for the wings. That will also be enough for the tail; the biggest piece is the horizontal stab and elevator at 8′ span. So, a 10 foot long table will be enough for everything up until I start the fuselage. For that, I’ll need 14 feet (I just checked the drawing; it’s 13′ and change). That’s probably a year out, though. After discussing with Stu, I’m currently planning to build a work table with folding wings on each end, similar to the one in his shop. He’s suggesting a 36 x 60 inch table with 36 x 30 inch wings; that will end up 10′ long when fully extended. When it comes time to build the fuselage, I’d need to add a second, smaller table to extend it to the length required. A standard 24 x 60 inch EAA 1000 table should be enough for that; I can build one if nobody has one I can borrow for a couple of months.

Lastly, there’s storage. Right now, in order to move everything home I’ll need a place to store wood and parts. The longest pieces are the eleven-foot-long upper wing spars. There’s a lot of 6- to 8-foot stock, a stack of wing ribs, and so on. I need to set up something accessible on one wall of the garage to store that stuff. Also, I’ll need other load of lumber for the tail and fuselage; that will need to be stored as well. I’m thinking I may place an order with Aircraft Spruce and drive out to Oshkosh this year to bring it home in the truck. I haven’t been to Airventure since 2018, I think, so it’s about time for another trip out there anyway. I’m also scouting for lumber yards tat would carry good quality southern white pine, as that can be used for a good portion of the fuselage and tail according to Fisher.

Onward. I’ve been spending a lot of time in the garage getting things cleaned up, organized, and re-organized. I want to get this under control and get back to building ASAP.

Posted on

Splitting up the build

I heard from Stu today that he needs his shop back. I didn’t ask for how long — I suspect he may be not quite as enthused about having a large part his shop taken over with what seems like an indefinite project, especially when I’m not there for a week or two. I’ve been dealing with a bunch of other things that have been deferred on the house and cars, and admittedly a couple of those days have been just inertia – and trying to figure out the best way to deal with the aileron/bracket interference. I did tell him it would take 2-3 years to get to the point where I was ready to take it to the airport for assembly, but being told that and actually seeing the impact are two different things, of course.

At this point I’ll build a movable wing storage rack for the two lower wings, and move them to the hangar at Millard as soon as I have the left wing varnished. Those wings can live there while I figure out my next move. My garage is not currently in a state suitable for building. It’s too cold in winter to work with epoxy, and unbearably hot for much of the summer. It was workable for aluminum construction on the RV-7, but the epoxy used for this plane is less tolerant of temperature extremes while working on assembly. I’ve been planning to install a mini split heat pump in there for heat and A/C; I think I’ll move ahead with that.

Tail surfaces can be built on a single 4 x 8′ sheet of MDF. I think I can free up enough space in the garage for that, and once done they can hang on a wall either at home or at the hangar. I need to review the fuselage plans to see how much workbench I’ll need for that — with any luck, a 2 x 16′ bench would do, so maybe I can just split the 4 x 8 down the center and make a single long bench for the fuselage. The upper wings will be the challenge. I really need at least 11 x 4′, so I just need to do some planning.

Posted on

A little varnish

Picked up a gallon can of Varathane Ultimate Spar Urethane this afternoon. A gallon can is about the same price as two one-quart cans, and I figure between the wings, fuselage, and tail I’ll probably use most of it. I gave the holes for the bushings and the wood where they will go a coat this afternoon before heading home — it was a busy day cleaning out the garage and ferrying grandkids around. Tomorrow I’ll pick up some primer and hopefully get a start on varnishing the rest of the wing. I’d like to have it assembled and ready to rack by the weekend, if I can. Then I’ll need to pull down the left wing and finish it up – bushings, varnish, brackets.

Posted on

Boy, I’m bushed!

Today I took the wing brackets over to the shop, sorted them all out, and re-marked them so I could tell one part from the other. There are seven (I think) different bracket types. The acid etch solution had removed all of the markings, along with other stuff.

I sorted out which brackets are needed for the right lower wing that’s on the bench, and checked all of the bolt sizes for proper fit. All are acceptable, if not perfect. I have AN4-24A bolts (1-15/16″ grip length) for the main spar root attachment brackets; I could have used AN4-23A (1-13/16″ grip length). It’s not a problem; a couple of AN960 washers do the trick and are a perfectly acceptable solution. On the rear spar N-strut (outer end) brackets, the AN4-16A bolts are a tad long; I could have used -15A. Two AN960 and one AN960L are fine. As a mental exercise I calculated the weight savings if I ordered the shorter bolts. The shorter bolts would weigh about half an ounce less (total per wing); the washers would bring that up to just a smidge over half an ounce — .53 ounce, or about 15 grams per wing. I can live with that.

But I digress. I got all the remaining bushings cut. Once I wrapped my head around that fact that the bushings do not need to be cosmetically and dimensionally perfect, but just need to be “flush or slightly below” the face of the wood per the plans, things went a little quicker. I pulled the 24 tooth per inch metal blade from my bandsaw and replaced it with a 10 TPI wood blade, which is fine for thin wall AL tubing like this. I set up the miter gauge and fence for the length I wanted. The tubing cut-off end was snagging the blade teeth; Stu suggested a spacer on the rip fence that extends just shy of the blade. That did the trick! Now the cut-offs roll out of the way. I cut one piece and tested for fit in the hole; once that was verified I was able to set the fence once and cut as many pieces of each diameter tube as I needed. Easy peasy. That will save hours of build time.

Now I need some etching primer for the brackets, and spar urethane for the wood, and I can get everything installed and call this wing done.

Oh, after I cut the bracket for the aileron connecting rod.

And get the bearing block holes drilled.

And… whatever else I’ve forgotten.

Posted on

Finishing out the aileron bay

Last session I cut and sanded everything to get the top of the aileron bay closed out. Well, not everything; after gluing in the CW37 piece I realized that there were some additional supports I hadn’t cut. As I was running short on time, though, I had to leave them for another day.

The fun part (and it actually was kind of fun) was cutting notches in CW37 for the ends of the rib caps. After marking the location of both sides of each rib. I cut a shallow slot with he razor saw, then used an X-Acto knife to gradually fit the depth of the notch to fit. In the end I got it in and clamped, then had to leave.

Posted on

A few more false ribs

I glued up two more last night, and will do two more tonight. That will make 18 down, with 20 19 more to go. I’ll typically take some time at lunch to cut out the cross brace pieces and get everything set up. Then after work I’ll mix up some T88 and glue the ribs up, then let the glue cure overnight. By the next morning I can pull them out of the jigs and start again.

I’ve run out of cross-brace stock that’s been sanded down to 3/32″, so I’ll have to stop while I retrieve the small shop vacuum from the project house where it is now and run some more 1/8″ stock through the drum sander. It’s a pain, yes, but it has to be done.

I’m already debating where to go from here, once all of the false ribs are finished in a few weeks (maybe). I could start on the tail, but that will require a 4 x 8 work surface. The wing spars will require a longer bench, at least 12′ long. I may instead start working on cutting out the large number of nose ribs that will be needed, and the other high volume plywood parts. It’s awfully tempting to set up my CNC router again for that part, but I doubt that I will. I’d have to translate the outline from the printed plans into G-code for the router, and quite frankly I think by the time I got that right I could cut them all out by hand. I’ve seen a couple of guys use a router and a flush cutter to route the nose ribs from a pattern. I’m a little concerned about the radius on the inside corners where the nose rib glues to the false spar. I figure I could either sand a matching radius there, or touch up the corners of the nose ribs with a bandsaw or something. I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.

Posted on

Spar web update

For anyone else who might be in the same predicament, the fine folks at Homebuilt Airplanes came up with a couple more sources. B&D International carries 5′ x 5′ sheets of Finnish birch aircraft plywood, and will cut and ship UPS. Boulter doesn’t carry as wide a variety, but might be good if you’re closer to the east coast than the west.

The price at B&D is higher than Aircraft Spruce. If you price it by the square foot, it’s not terribly higher. 13%, on the 1/8″ sheet I need. Not terrible.