Lindy
4/21/2007
Well, I had a good time working in Phoenix for a few days this past week, and I got to have dinner with Mr. Darwin Barrie on Monday night. Always good to see him! I got back Thursday, but we had our chapter meeting that night, Friday was my Anniversary (5 years!), and today Rob and I flew the Cub again. So, after a whole week off of working on the airplane, I thought I get back in to it tonight. Brit is at a hunt test with Yeager, so no one was home to tell me I couldn't go out to work in the garage at 9pm and work until 12:15am! Sweet!
I started tonight by working with the F-719 aux longerons. It took me a while to figure out the best way to keep this in place once they were fitted, but duct tape seemed to be the answer.
I drew the centerline, and started drilling away. The 719B clip was a little interesting to figure out as well. There's a hole that is already drilled in it, but there is no way to see it since the firewall stiffener is in the way on the inside, and the skin is in the way on the outside. There is a dimension called out on the plans, but there was still no guarantee I'd hit the hole already drilled in the clip. I made some measurements, and then drilled a #40 hole with the 12" bit to see how close I could get. Turns out, I made it spot on! Cool!
Then I repeated those steps for the right side, and then started on the F-717 lower longerons. These require some major trimming after they are cut from angle stock. Here they are after they were cut down to 26 5/8".
Now it was time to trim. I made the rough cuts with the bandsaw and a hand saw.
Then I used whatever I had in my arsenal from files to sandpaper to the wheel to smooth them out. Lookin' smoooooth!
You can see the one on the bottom of the pic has a small dip towards the end. Well...my bandsaw got away from me slightly, and caused that. It smoothed out nicely, and the bar is quite thick so I'm not worried about this in the least.
Felt good to get working on it again!
3.25 hours