Got in a little more time today on the build.
My propane heater bottle went dry so the danged garage was really cold. It was one of the those cold rainy drizzle days. So work in the garage until I just got to cold. Had some unexpected expenses come up, so I will have to wait til the end of the month to refill the propane bottle.
I will still get some work in by wear sweat pants and shirt.
But in the meantime Windy told me to clear off some room on the dinning room table and see what I could do in the WARM house. So that is what I did. The table already has protection on. So i placed my balsa building board on it and the magnetic board on top of that. I really love the magnetic building board way of doing things.
I installed all of the top and bottom cross stringers and diagonals. Not adding gussets just yet. It really is easier with my disc sander sitting next to me on the work bench. My work bench is a massive torsion box unit. It sets on brackets of each of the inside sides of the cabinets. The bench has 5 leveling screws supporting it. I estimate it weighs around 399 lbs. It is really close to dead true. But I don't consider it close enough for wings.
The main reason for not installing the gussets yet is that I still need to build A under bench mount for the dremel tool.Should not take but 30-45 minutes to make. Then I can use the little drum sander mounted and stable, unlike when I did the 1st set of gussets.
So once all the top and bottom cross pieces were done I added a lite ply doubler to the joint that is at f1. Dose not seem like a lot of strength there, even with the gussets.
Then it was time to get to the part I was not looking forward to. Bending the the 4 spruce sticks that go to the firewall. I went over all the forward joints with some thin super glue and the struck the fuse nose in a pot of boiling water. Got a very energetic reaction with the boiling water. The boiling jumped up and started to spray out. I pulled the fuse hot real fast and jumped back. Next try I very slowly inserted the fuse into the boiling water. Still energetic but under control. I left the foward fuse in the water about 30 minutes.
The 4 spruce stick would with clamps on them. So I left them clamp and bent for about 6 hours. Still want to spring away from were they need to be, but with less force now. So I decided to do the thing in steps. I epoxied the 2 upper spruce stringers to the fire wall, and will let that set up over night. Then the bottom strings. The bottom strings have to bend in 2 directions at once so are much more resistant.
The slots in the fire wall are fairly snug So when I mounted the fire wall to them I naturally had some down thrust. Works for me and looks to be just about the right amount. I will use washers for the side thrust. It is always annoying when you have to add both down and right thrust with washers at the same time.
And that is a rap for today.
Ken
