June 03, 2009

Today I glued on the fuselage and wing doublers, as well as the tail, the air scoop doubler, and the cooler door behind the air scoop. Tomorrow I should have all the formers in, and the nose bowl on.

I've stopped sanding after every evolution in favor of a giant sanding effort at the end. I'm noticing that the fuselage is no longer 3/8" wide in spots, and while overall that will not hurt things, its not going to help either.

I had a slight snafu with the tail while gluing it. I thought I had it seated, but it was not. Fortunately the Gorilla glue had not cured yet, and I was able to correct it.

One thing to note is that you HAVE TO USE WOOD SCREWS when gluing the aft fuselage to that tail, clamps are not sufficient here. Fortunately I had a second set of hands to help out with this today.

I have some Gorilla Glue scraping to do tomorrow before I start with the rest of the formers. While gluing the tail and correcting the tail, I made a mess with that stuff, but it scrapes off well. I've also noted that the seat is actually too wide, which was concerning until I compare it to the plans. I thought that I might have made the dado's too deep, but I actually made the seat too wide! I somehow missed that when I checked the parts to the plans after cutting/sanding everything.

While the picture the other day showed the formers all in, they were not glued. These pictures show everything glued! The rate I'm going, I suspect that the wood portion of the build will be completed this Sunday, and I'll be forced to wait until payday on the 15th to get the hardware and sheet metal kit. While I have the hardware for some of this, there are parts that I have not fabricated, It would be easier to have them made and sent. If I can get the guy to expedite things, I'll have no problems getting this completed in time.

Zinger Props is going to make the spinner, but I will be cutting the slots of the props myself, with the tools at the wood working shop on base. Because of this, and my slight tail modification, I was throwing around the idea of Dago Red again, but I believe the red and purple paints will fade poorly as it ages. Double Trouble Too's paint scheme is still what I'm going with!

One thing I want to note is that the plans and the instructions are to me convoluted where explains is where the fuselage doubler (with the one with the air cooler door) and the air scoop is, there is an gap. I could not find in the instructions to use anything else, nor do the plans illustrate that the doubler needs to be sanded, yet it does not look right to just glue it on the scoop. I remedied this by cutting a piece of ply in the shape of the air scoop and gluing it before adding the body doubler (the P.I.T.A. one). I may be using incorrect part names, but the ones I'm naming are similar. I'll take pictures tomorrow to further illustrate what I'm referencing. You'll notice the air scoop and the doublers in the one at the Virginia Fly-In are not even the same size, I did my best to shape the scoop and the doubler(s) to be close in size.