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1998
March.
3/29/98 – Fuselage jig completed. Cut 4130 tubes for fuselage sides. Ended up bending the bottom .75x.049 longeron with a simple conduit bender.The bends are so small, why the hell not! Watch out and keep both bends straight! Also, instead of using a hack saw to cut the tubes, I grabbed an old heavy-duty tubing cutter that I had in the toolbox, oiled it up, and cut every tube with that. Worked great! And accurate too! Each cut was on the money and squared off the end to boot. Started on sides and cut two of everything. Screwed up a couple of pieces when I neglected to notice the stepdown to 1/2″ from 5/8″ toward the tail. Was in tube cutting nurvana and didn’t notice until almost done. Set aside the waste 5/8″ pieces for use later (I hope).
HOURS = 6
April.
4/23/98 – Bought a cheap welder truck for the tanks. It works to move the tanks, that’s all. Also picked up an electric metal shear (Milwaukee #68) that was on sale. I’m ready for the aluminum now!
4/19/98 – Finished grinding the tube tips and everything fitted in the jig very nicely. Just a little loose for expansion, but the ends weren’t TOO loose. Started tacking the side together with a #2 Smith tip and 4130 rod. The first few tacks were TERRIBLE! I had forgotten how to weld already! After a few, I started to get the feel again. Had to stop halfway for two reasons (1) I wanted to allow time for a fire watch on the wood jig and it was getting late, and (2) it suddenly dawned on me that my hoses from the tanks won’t reach the aft fuselage! ARGH! Time to get a cheap tank truck! I just love these little moments of discovery.
HOURS = 3
4/18/98 – Grinding fishmouth tips on tubing. This goes a lot slower than I thought it would. I was getting so finicky about the way the tubes fit, that I ended up spending about 15 minutes per end!
HOURS = 4
4/11/98 – Finished up the tube cuts for the fuselage. Had fun trying to duplicate the second lower longeron bends. With only two bends, one can be approximate, but the second bend has to be on the money. Lucked out – they match. Top longerons are now .075 all the way to the tail (change from prints). I then tagged each piece and stored for assembly later – had to go to work another weekend .
HOURS = 3
August.
Finally got back to work after a long time spent up north at Merrill and Oshkosh. The trip did me good and the motivation to finish this bird is back!
The Ol’ Joint JiggerBorrowed a Joint Jigger tool from a buddy who races SCCA cars to help with the fish-mouth cuts on the fuselage tubes. I soon had a technique going where I would cut the tube tips to length on the Joint Jigger and dress them out to fit on the grinder. Everything sped up immensely and the tubes fit great! Spent most of today diddling, um, experimenting with the Joint Jigger though.
Tack Man!After a few days of struggling, I called up Dale Severs and whined about how bad my welding was. He agreed to stop by and see what I was doing wrong. Within ten minutes after he checked in, I was making Tack Man 2solid tacks! Thanks Dale! After finishing up the second side, I pulled the first one back down off the wall and retacked it. Much better now. Time to flip the jig!
September. September was always a busy month with EAA business and other The fuselage shopfly-ins, but I did get the jig changed over for the rest of the fuselage. It suddenly dawned on me that I didn’t really have to flip the entire jig since I had reskinned the top side for my new plans anyway. I simply pulled up the thin pressboard skins and laid down a fresh layer of pressboard. After spending a few days laying out the jig and nailing down the tubing guides, I was ready to go. The fuselage sides came down off the wall and were clamped solidly vertical to the jig. Lined the sides up carefully. Decided to make a vertical jig to hold the sides squarely rather than cross-bracing the longerons.
October. The slow moving progress of the project began Vertical jig in placeto speed up!
I made the vertical jig by taking 5/8″ particle board and laying out the cross-section of the fuselage on it (2’2″ by 2’1″). I then bored 3/4″ holes at the corners with a Forstner bit and Bottom saddles of vertical jigcarefully cut along the intersecting centerlines. When I settled the jig into place it became very apparent that the only holes needed were the ones for the top (now bottom) longerons. (see the photo to the right) I cut the top sides of the jig back to 25 1/4″ centered and fit it between the fuselage sides. Perfect fit! The darn thing squared up the sides beautifully! Everything, that is, except the aft half that Tieing off the fuselage with stringsplayed out a little too much. The high tech answer? Why, simply tie the silly thing together with string until we can get the tubes tacked in! Hey, this is a biplane, not the space shuttle! (Actually, in the picture, that’s exactly what we were saying while laughing at the idea.) The irony was not lost on me that this is exactly what we do to turkey legs.
Began work on the cross tubes when I suddenly discovered that I had laid out everything between stations one and two incorrectly. So, everything came off the jig while I fixed that. Checking out the alignmentAs long as I had the jig cleared, I double checked the remainder of the layout only to find that everything else was fine. A nice comfort factor.
After fitting the fuselage sides back on the jig and realigning Double check everything!!!!everything, I was ready to start cutting tubes again. By this time, Mitch and Dale stopped by to see how things were Mitch fitting tubesgoing. Mitch was anxious to try his hand at fuselage work and ended up cutting just about every tube needed in the center of the fuselage. What a deal! We also spent some time letting him weld a bit, but not on the aircraft! That’s mine to mess up! Turns out he’s a natural at it all. He should really build an aircraft – something with two sets of wings maybe….and it should start with an “H”…….hint, hint.
The following week, I came out and tacked everything up. Now I’m ready to close the tail and nose on her! The plan is to get the fuselage off the jig before the snow flies!
November.
The fuselage has gone relatively smoothly. I’ve tacked up enough of the central section of her to close the tail and nose. Dale stopped by to help out and it all went smoothly.
The deal here is to maintain a constant pressure on the side you’re pulling in while evenly heating both the top and bottom longeron just behind the cluster at the point where the bend will occur. Don’t force the side in, just keep the torch moving, heating each point and suddenly she’ll give and move. Kept both sides straight and square too.
Now that we’ve folded the tail and nose, all that’s left are the crosstubes and diagonals.
The holidays are coming up, not to mention shutdown at work, so Hatz work will probably grind to a halt.
1999
February. Finally back to work after two months away! Kept the fuselage pristine by giving it an occasional spray of LPS to keep the rust nasties away.
Busy tacking crosstubes and diagonals all over the fuselage. Trying hard to put in as much time as I can on her and it’s paying off. By the end of the month, everything was tacked in place and the fuselage was ready to be removed from the jig. Big time stuff!
Next will be the tail post, then to put it on a rotating fixture to weld all those clusters.
March. Well, finally got the fuselage all tacked up and out of the jig. My biggest nightmare – that the fuselage wouldn’t fit inverted back into the jig – turned out to be just another needless worry. The fuselage dropped right down into the same alignment blocks without any encouragement from me.
I’m always knocked out by how rigid these structures are after you get all the crossmembers in place. My faith in engineering is safe and sound, which is a good thing because I’m an engineer.
The symmetry is also something I admire. The photo straight down the fuselage is a view that I stared at for quite a while.
Dale Severs kindly stopped by to inspect the Wee Beastie, mainly offering sage advice on the placement of beverages on the jig to double-check level. No wonder his Hatz wins awards!
Okay, the tailpost still has to go on – the next job before the jig gets taken down.
I’ll just set up a vertical jig to hold everything straight and at a right-angle in relation to the top longeron, fold the tail closed, and that’s it!
April. Needed a change of pace, so I moved into the woodshop of the Wee Beastie Biplane Works to start work on the ribs.
After cutting out a master template for the nose pieces, I cut forty (40) blanks. The idea is to cut away most of the excess on the band saw and then to trim each piece to size on the router.
I cut out one set of gussets in order to make one rib in the new high-tech jig. Everything worked out well, with only a slight surface stickiness where the T-88 pooled. I think a little wax will eliminate that.
Flipping the rib over the next day, I put it on a flat worksurface covered with a sheet of the same acrylic used for the jig. Itried using a tack gun on the gussets with strips of cardboard under each to pull them back out later. It worked, but was too tedious for a lazy guy like me. I finally just settled for clamping each pair of gussets with a piece of acrylic under a thick piece of wood, all held in place with a five pound weight. That worked fast and the results were fine.
Excess gusset material was trimmed away with the router.
I’m getting the woodshop organized for rib production now. I hope to get all the pieces cut so I can start assembly, but first I need to count pieces needed for each rib type.
