Someone help me get this Stearman flying!!
Wulf, first off, I'll admit that I didn't read every word of this thread but from what I gather, you're adding more and more weight to solve your problem which you perceive to be a cg problem. After building five bipes I'll tell you what I've found. The incidence meter is not "helpful"....it's mandatory.
Unless you're just plain lucky, you've got to have it to build a bipe that flies right. Incidence problems on a bipe can mimic a cg problem. I found that almost every one of my bipes flew in a nose up attitude. I thought the first one was tail heavy and adjusted the cg. It still didn't help. Took a ton of down trim and I flew it the rest of it's life like that, which was about five years. I finally lost it due to that fact. In an inverted, downwind, deadstick situation, I suddenly ran out of up elevator, ideas and altitude at the same time. No wonder, I had used just about all the elevator travel there was just to fly level under power. If I had been a little quicker to evaluate the situation, I would have rolled it upright and turned back to the field instead of trying to split 's' it back....but....hindsight
What I came to realize was that the plane flew too well to be a cg problem and if the elevator solved it, that it was an incidence problem instead.
Now, I build all of my bipes with zero incidence on elevator and both wings. If I fly it and it want's to do the nose up thing, I put in 1 degree of down incidence top wing by shimming the rear of the that wing up. Usually, a popsicle stick or something of a similar thickness (washers, scraps of 1/16 ply, etc.) has done the trick.
So far, this has worked well for me and allowed me to reset my elevator trim to neutral.