Dec 27, 2020     Plying the side - (3 hours)       Category: Fuselage

cut and added the plywood strip gussets and tail gusset to the first side. Also cut the firewall to aft of cockpit ply which I will glue up next time.

  Dec 22, 2020     Gluing in trusses & seat supports - (4 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Glued up all of the corner to corner trusses and seat support components. Also, the piece with the 5 clamps is a laminate made out of excess material to create cross pieces to join the two fuselage sides when they are complete.

Also, I had to put in another wood order... realized I only ordered longerons for one side, which sucks... but then again I also needed more material to join the two sides together so hopefully won't take too long for aircraft spruce to get me the extra material...

Will work on ply pieces and gluing up add'l laminated pieces while I wait...

  Dec 20, 2020     Gluing up scarfs & vertical cross pieces - (3.1 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Glued up all the scarf joints and vertical pieces of first longeron side. I clamped the hell out of the scarfs to make sure of a great wetting of all the surfaces. The fire extinguisher makes a great weight!

  Dec 17, 2020     Fitting up truss pieces - (4.2 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Got all of the corner to corner trusses cut and dry fitted.

  Dec 15, 2020     More scarfing and crosspieces - (3.5 hours)       Category: Fuselage

After more head scratching figured out right scarf joint on the right hand side of bottom longeron piece. Dry fitted the two scarf joints together and held with clamps while I cut cross pieces.

  Dec 13, 2020     Bottom longeron scarf cuts - (3.8 hours)       Category: Fuselage

The fuselage wood arrived over the last week so I've started building out a side... the bottom scarf joint has been a major thorn in my side... the geometry was a little complex and the plans/directions are very vague at this point in that one has to 'guesstimate' where to start the scarf joint as it doesn't specify in the plans or directions. Plans indicated a minimum 6" scarf so I went with 7.25." I finally got the geometry correct and am just dry fitting the joints to get them as close to perfect as I can... the good news is the second one is just a trace of this one, so should be very fast. Also, this is only the left scarf, there's still a right hand scarf to figure out.

  Dec 08, 2020     Finishing layout of fuselage - (3.5 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Finished layout out fuselage side on table.

The 'weights' on the side workbench are there to hold a special rib onto the full length plywood gusset.

  Nov 25, 2020     Laying out reference line & fuselage - (3 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Drew out reference line datum and built layout strip along line to act as top longeron edge.

  Nov 22, 2020     Getting ready to start fuselage - (3 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Got the 3 separate build tables together and leveled to build a cohesive unit. Covered in craft paper and began laying out fuselage sides.

Also, my wife got me this awesome custom sign made for my birthday (which was yesterday)...looks awesome above my antique find!