notchers clicos ribs and nests
She served me well but the day finally came when she just wouldn't turn on anymore
Okay, I did drop it so I opened it up to see if anything obvious was broken
I didn't see anything obvious and there were some tiny little springs and lever things that
had shot out so....
oh well
off to Best Buy to get a new camera. This one is just a 3.2 megapixel. There were probably better ones to be had but
I wanted something that uses good ol double A's and the memory card was the same so at least now I've got a spare
I've been doing some TIG welding over at the local community college so I got a bunch of 4130 cro-moly tubing
and bought this cheap Chinese tubing notcher - thirty seven bucks from Harbor Freight
Those Chinese...they were thorough enough to let me know up front that the drill press wasn't included in the box
This tubing notcher also has some unique 'features'
take, for instance, the bolts that secure the plate and mount
They are bigger than 1/2 in or 13 mm and smaller than 9/16 in or 14 mm
in other words - there aren't any wrenches that fit them (unless they're made special at the same factory)
but it works okay for the practice that I'm doing. You can tell by the quality of my welds that I'm not ready to
take any of my work into the air just yet
But I'm slowly getting better
TIG welding is very tedious and it takes practice, practice, practice.....The community college is great for this
Fifty eight bucks and I can spend over 100 hours burning up their gas and rods and my metal
I have to supply my own 4130 tubing as they don't have any of that there
This picture is just to show off the enhanced macro capability of my new camera
I'm happy with the performance
Here's another. Jeeze, I haven't even started on the wings yet
there are undoubtably going to be some 'issues'
Okay, back to work. I'm still working on reskinning the lower part of the stab
My new trim cables are enroute so I should be finishing it up next week
Here I'm drilling out the rivets on the rear spar that hold one of the ribs
As I got further into it I realized that I was just going to have to replace all of the ribs as they were in pretty sad shape
Here I'm creating a form
It's basically just traced from the original rib
The problem is that I didn't go about this perfectly. I drilled the holes in the skin using the strap duplicator on the original ribs
and now that I've got new ribs I have to duplicate the holes in the skin
If I had started fresh I could have had a perfectly straight line with about half as many rivets
oh well...learn from your mistakes and move on
Over all things are pretty decent
Another problem is that for some reason there just isn't a single straight line on the Luscome airframe everything has a curve to it.
That's one of the beautiful things about them but in the case of these ribs it causes them to 'bow' when formed
so I had to make these flutes to straighten them out
Unfortunately I didn't have fluting pliers so they are less than perfect but they got the job done
Another problem - I have to get my arm through that hole in the center to reach all the way out to the end ribs
so that I can buck the rivets. Well the original hole was about 4" x 4" and my arm wouldn't go in
I know that back in the late 40's the kids who built these things were probably pretty skinny
I had to make the hole bigger by a couple of inches
But that created another problem as the larger hole will be exposed underneath where the fuselage converges at the tail
So I had to make this doubler that I can install after all the ribs are riveted in
Looking inside the stab - I need to rivet the outermost rib then install the next and rivet it in place and then install the inboard rib
It's doable but it'll be tough
Okay this is controversial but I've reserved a new N number for the plane - 846AR and it's gonna be named 'Romeo'
I've got to personalize it somehow
Romeo's sibling
As the day comes to close I savor a cold ale as I ponder future obstacles
like how to build my gloveboxes so if a passenger opens one during landing it won't cause us to crash
The weather this time of year is great - life is good
A place where Romeo longs to return
soon my friend...