Way too hot in the garage

It has been really hot and humid here the last few days. It has kept me out of the garage. On Tuesday a friend of mine Mike P. in Minneapolis (he is building a Buttercup) sent me a message

"Hey Kent

Wanted to know if it was hot enough for you and if you were out in the garage "sweatin to the oldies?""

He wanted to rub it in that he has an A/C unit in his garage.

Guess it is time to keep up with the Jones'! I need to look for a window A/C unit for the garage.

Since I was finished with all of the welding on the main structure of the fuselage, I wanted to double check to see how straight everything came out. So I ran some lines down the outside of the fuselage (3" out from the front and 17.5" out from the rear) and one straight down the middle of the fuselage to take some measurements. So after all of the welding that takes place and anyone that has welded steel before knows, steel can move around a lot during welding. I ended up pretty lucky as I had taken some time to try my best to make sure everything stayed square, it only came out to be 1/32" off from nose to tail. (which to straighten this out it would require moving to one side 1/64"). So all in all at this point so far I am really happy.

Tube Structure For Top of Cabin Area

I spent yesterday 6-12-10 adding the structure to the top of the fuselage in the cabin area. I also built the area at station 48 which is right behind the seats and holds several items for the controls. For the top of the cabin area I clamped a piece of plywood in and drew the correct dimensions in. Next I cut the tubing to fit the area and tack welded everything in. Then final welded the pieces in place. I am awaiting the tubing for the landing gear mount to arrive. I should arrive by Thursday this week. So likely not much progress until then.

Main Gear and Tail Spring

Well I was lucky enough to have found a used set of gear from a Tailwind that the previous owner disassembled to sell for parts (can't figure out why he would do that). But I got a great deal on them. They need some cleaning up which is to be expected for what I paid for them. I was also lucky enough to have found a tail spring from Red Hamilton for a Tailwind. I also got a great deal on this and have already cleaned it up. I will post a picture of the tail spring later (camera batteries went dead). Anyway if I were to have bought these from Harmon Lang they would have set me back around $700-$800 for all of them, I was able to scrounge these parts for a little less than $275 total. The mains also came with some really strange brakes on them that I don't plan on using any further than just around the garage to be able to roll it around for moving it. I will replace these later with either Grove or Cleveland wheels and brakes.

Rotisserie and adjustable stool

So some of the other things that I have built to aid in welding and just working on the airplane in general are a rotisserie and an adjustable stool. The stool is built out of a jackscrew from an old office chair, 3 nuts that fit the jackscrew, 1/2" steel rod, and wood for the seat. The stool is really nice as I can adjust it up and down from about the height of a milk crate to a little taller than a regular chair. The rotisserie for the front and rear of the airplane also help tremendously because I can just rotate the airframe to any position that I want it at to make it a little more convenient for welding. I wanted to make sure that the rotisserie would be adjustable in height and that the main supports that mount to the airframe were all adjustable. I wanted this because an airframe will not balance simply on the centerline or what would be dead center of the firewall, and I wanted to be able to get the airframe at the proper height to allow it rotate all of the way around 360*. The other nice thing about adjust-ability is that later I will be able to use these on the wings when I fiberglass and paint them.

Still Welding

Like I said before in a previous post "Daunting Task of Welding Everything". I looked on the timer on my welder today 6/10/10 and I have 31 hours on the machine right now. This does include some practice welding and helping my wife's cousin with some welding he needed done but that maybe all added up to about 1 to 2 hours. Man this is taking a long time to weld everything. I think it would go faster if it were not for sitting back, drinking a soda, and admiring what is happening. I had planned on welding the fuselage with Oxy Acetylene but went ahead and bought a Miller Syncrowave 200 TIG machine to do the welding. I am glad that I did since it would have taken me at least twice as long to get this thing welded up. At first I didn't like welding the joints, especially the inside ones, because everything is at such an odd angle. I have since figured things out a little better and am really enjoying welding things up. There are a few more tubes to go in to complete the fuselage structure then I can start working on the main landing gear mount and tailwheel mount. This will be a milestone in the project as it will be sitting on the gear.

Everything Is Tacked Together

So once I got the sides completed I put in all of the diagonals making sure that everything was square when they went in. Once all of the diagonals were in I had to cut 2x4 pieces to go in between each station to slightly bow the longerons out slightly (somewhere around 1/2"). This helps to keep the longerons from bowing in from welding and will also make the longeron lines straight later down the road when I go to cover the fuselage (the polyester/ceconite/stitts/what ever you want to call it, can really move things around.) Then I started the daunting task of welding everything. The process started at the rear most station welding the outside straight welds a little at a time at each joint. I worked around each station on just the flat welds trying my best to balance the welds to avoid anything moving out of square. It helps to lock in each station by doing this and things will stay square.