And More Deburring

 More and more wing rib deburring, with 3/4 still to go.

Paint Booth

I’m afraid there won’t be much exciting to write about and show until I get the empennage parts, hopefully sometime in August if Van’s estimates are good. In the meantime, I’ll keep working on deburring and fluting the ribs for the wings. I think I’ll have those done in the next few weekends. This weekend is mulch spreading weekend though, so probably not a lot of airplane build happening.  That being said, I am going to take a drive down to Tacoma Narrows to pick up a DIY paint booth a builder down there is getting rid of.  I won’t use it for priming parts, so in reality it’s just going to be dismantled and put out in the shed for the foreseeable future. He’s selling it for far less than the cost of the material though, so it doesn’t make much sense to pass it up. I plan on painting the plane myself, so I’m going to need some sort of booth setup eventually. With a project like this, saving every penny counts!

The booth is a frame of PVC and is about 10x10x20.  When it comes time to paint, I’ll enclose it completely with plastic, put a box fan and air filter on each end of the booth, and hang a bunch of bright lights inside.

Side note - I noticed the other day that the swivel mushroom set that I got from Cleaveland Tools had some sort of inclusion in the metal, making the surface rough. Not knowing if that also means there is some unseen weakness in the metal, I emailed them and asked for a replacement. They said they had never seen this happen before, and within two days I had the replacement and a postage paid mailer to return the old one.  I’ve been finding that a lot of the aircraft home builder vendors are smaller mom and pop shops and are great to work with like this.

Primer

Interior surface primer for corrosion control is a hotly debated topic to say the least. Options are to prime everything with 2 part epoxy primer for the ultimate bullet proof finish and protection, or to prime nothing at all.  I know people on both sides of the fence.  After a lot of thought, I'm going to hit a middle ground and use Stewart Systems' EkoPrime, which is far less toxic than something like Akzo epoxy primer.  It's not as durable, but I think for interior surfaces it's completely fine.  The huge benefit of EkoPrime is that it is water borne and is not 2 parts, so what you don't spray can just be saved for later.  With a 2 part primer, what you don't spray is just waste.  The other benefit of EkoPrime is that it can be cleaned up with water.  For small parts, I'll just grab some self etching primer in a spray can.  No need to drag out the paint gun and mix everything up for little one-off needs.  In most climates I would probably take the approach of just spraying mating surfaces and call it a day.  Considering I will likely have to have my plane outside (hopefully in a carport style hangar at a minimum) until an enclosed hangar is available, I think it probably makes sense to just prime all interior surfaces.  Maybe not in a dry climate like Colorado, but in the Pacific Northwest, the moisture is a problem for most of the year. 

I emailed Stewart Systems regarding how to use EkoEtch and EkoPrime:

We recommend etching the aluminum by spraying it lightly  with EkoEtch mixed with water and then rubbing it for a few minutes with Scotch-Brite. Then rinse with water.  It is critical to do this on any surface that will be painted. On interior parts if you were doing primer only corrosion protection you could just clean it with eco-clean and spray it with EkoPrime. It will not get as good of adhesion, but on an internal surface that will not be disturbed it should not be an issue. It will provide good corrosion protection.  In both cases we recommend cleaning with EkoClean first. 

Good to know I don't have to go crazy with etching for internal surfaces.  That being said, I think I will still probably go the route of EkoClean, followed by EkoEtch (scuffing with Scotch Brite) and then primer.  With the  way riveting can beat things up, I think having the best adhesion possible is probably a good idea.  Depending on how EkoPrime looks and works for closed areas will determine if I use it for the cockpit or if I go with something more durable.  I will probably cover most of the cockpit with panels to finish it off, so don't have a burning desire to paint inside if a primer looks okay and is hard enough. Stewart also makes a water borne epoxy primer, which could be a solution for a higher touch area like the cockpit.  I'll cross that bridge down the road.

I did just find a used Devilbiss Finishline HVLP paint gun for cheap, so one more tool covered.  I think I will get the Devilbiss DeKups system too, just to make cleaning up and saving primer a little easier.  They also enable you to spray at odd angles, whereas that can be a little tougher with a normal gravity fed gun setup.

More Deburring

Just a few hours in the garage today deburring more wing ribs. After doing it by hand for awhile using sand paper, I tried the 1" die grinder wheel instead. Much, much easier, and far more effective! The grooves that develop in the wheel actually end up making it easier than the flat wheel.  Of course the size of the wheel meant I couldn't do all of the little notches, so I'll have to go back through each rib to do those by hand. A few more hours and I'll be done with deburring and the next step will be to bend the flanges to a true 90 degrees, then flute the ribs to flatten them out.

When pulling out the ribs from the wing crate, I also grabbed the bag of hardware.  Just out of curiosity, I checked it against the inventory sheet to see if anything has gone missing given that I'm the third owner of the kit.  I didn't go to the extreme of counting every nut and bolt, but just checked to see that all bags were there.  Surprisingly, only one small bag of rivets is missing.  It's possible that it's somewhere in the crate still.  If not, when I get closer to being ready to start the wings I'll just order additional rivets.  I'm guessing it'll be wise if I order some extras of the most commonly used rivets anyway.

Actual Airplane Parts!

I ordered the empennage kit from Van's a few months ago, but manufacturing is pretty slow these days, so it's not expected to arrive until mid-August sometime.  Luckily, around the same time I stumbled on a wing kit for sale on Vansairforce (fantastic RV builder forum).  The downside - it was in Reno.  I played the "I'm your favorite son" card, and before you knew it, I was on a road trip with Mom and Dad.  We had to haul a horse trailer home anyway, so I rationalized a detour through Reno on the way back to Seattle and we picked up the wing kit.  That spar crate is long!  It stuck a few feet out of the back of the trailer, but we had it strapped in pretty solid, so it didn't budge.

The spar and wing crates are just going to hang out for a while.  Even though I have the wings in-hand, I'm not going to build out of order.  I've been told over and over by RV builders that starting with the tail is the way to go. For one, Van's purposefully writes better instructions for the tail since it's supposed to be the first kit built.  By the time you get to the wings, the hand holding in the manual apparently stops, since the assumption is that you know how to read plans at that point.  Plus, the tail kit parts are far cheaper than the wing kit parts.  I'd much rather screw up a cheap part as I learn!  I'm not sure I've ever met anyone who built an RV without having to reorder a few parts.  I'm just assuming I'll also be in that camp, no matter how careful I am.

And this brings me to today! Since I have a few months before my tail kit arrives, I decided to go ahead and do some of the prep work on the wing ribs while I'm waiting.  I'm not going to build anything, but the rib prep is a huge task, so I may as well get it out of the way.  This doesn't look like many ribs, but each one in the picture is actually 2 sandwiched together.  This is not all of the wing ribs unfortunately.  There are still more in the crate.

And so begins the mindless task of deburring every single edge on each rib.  Every edge that has been punched, cut, sheared, etc needs to be smoothed out to reduce the risk of stress cracks down the road.  I am finding that the different edges require different methods for deburring, so I'm doing them all in stages.  I first smoothed out all of the lightening holes using a 1" Scotch Brite wheel on my die grinder as recommended by the instructions.  This worked really well.  I can't imagine how slow it would go using any other method.  I did hit both sides, just because the burr causes a lip, so just doing the flat inner surface of the hole doesn't necessarily do the trick.  It didn't take long before the wheel had a couple of grooves in it.  Actually, that ended up being great because it made it super easy to whip it around the circle and deburr without losing control of the grinder.  One circle and it's done.  Do much more than that and you're actually taking material off instead of just smoothing the surface.

And here's the pile of ribs with lightening holes deburred.  Step 2 will be to deburr the flanges.  This is complicated by the fact that Van's already partially fluted many of these (they still have to be fluted to straighten unfortunately).  If it were just a flat flange, I'd run it over the large Scotch Brite wheel and it would be done super fast.  With the flutes, the wheel doesn't work very well.  So I'm having to use fine grit (I think 400) sand paper to hit the flanges.  This is what is going to take forever.

I will try to finish up the flanges this weekend if I can.  The last step in prepping these ribs will be to take one more pass to deburr all of the notches.  I could have done that while doing the flanges, but there are a number of notches in each rib and they're pretty small.  I need to make some sort of small rod with sand paper on it to get into the small notches.  Just easier to do them all at once as opposed to switching between tools.  So that's on deck.

Once each rib is completely deburred I'll mark it with blue tape or something.  It's going to be a while until I actually start building the wing, so I need to be pretty clear about what has been done.

Practice Kit

I don't have many pictures of the practice kit since I'm still trying to do catch-up with blogging and hadn't really thought about documenting the process at that point.  I ordered the "training project" kit from Van's to fumble my way through working with aluminum and these specialty tools I've never used before.  The kit comes with two separate projects - one that walks through the process of prepping and riveting angle and skins together, and a second one that is a mini airfoil.

Airfoil - Trimmed the stiffeners, match drilled to size, deburred, dimpled them and the skins, and back riveted it all together.

Cleco the ribs in place, match drill to final size, pull apart, deburr and dimple.  Only after all of those steps are you actually ready to rivet.

I was rolling at this point and thought I'd get the airfoil done so I could hang it on the wall, but as luck would have it, one of the tools I needed to finish the job is still on back order.  The rib ends are very tight, and there's no easy way to dimple them.  I have a dimple die on order that is for tight spaces like this, but like everything else these days, it's back ordered.  So for now, the practice project will remain incomplete.

Tools, Tools, Tools (Fun, Fun, Fun!)

I'll try not to go into excruciating detail about the tools, but just in case it's helpful for someone else down the road who is trying to figure out what is required to build an RV:

 Air compressor - Like most of my tools, this was a Craigslist find.  Do I need an 80 gallon beast of a compressor that spits out more air than any of my tools can use?  No.  Is it really nice to have that much air?  Absolutely!  I put the compressor in the corner and plumbed it with enough copper line to let the air cool before it hits the air drops at the other end.  This is necessary so that the water can condense out and be removed by the filters (need dry air for priming/painting).  I don't have pictures of the air drops here, but every vertical line has a drain, and at the end of the line I have one water separator and one filter before my redneck manifold with a couple of air couplings.

Bandsaw - This isn't a required tool, since I could technically use a hacksaw, but the price was right and most people I've spoken to say it's a huge time saver.  This saw had been a little neglected, but a little elbow grease to get the rust off of the table, new tires, and a new blade and it is now running like a champ.

One thing I did hate about the saw was the fact that the tensioning spring was too weak, so I couldn't get the blade tensioned correctly. I bought a new spring, which made all the difference in the world.  The tensioning knob was also a tiny thing that was next to impossible to use, so I got an extension with a crank on it instead.  Now it's a legitimately functional saw.

C-Frame - Now on to fairly aviation specific tools.  The C-frame is a tool used to dimple parts.  The dimple dies are sized according to the rivet to be used, and you simply place the male die on one side, the female die on the other side, and whack it all with a hammer.  There is a different style of dimpling tool called the DRDT-2 that squeezes dimples instead of using a hammer blow, but personally I like the positive set of this C-Frame.  It's also cool that it can be used for back riveting.

I was told that I'd need some decent space around the C-frame since it's used heavily in dimpling skins.  I decided to dedicate my 2x4 bench to it.  I built up a platform on either side to support parts.  None of it is attached to the workbench, so it can easily be thrown under the bench when not in use.

Misc Tools - I ordered the RV toolkit from Cleaveland Tools.  This doesn't have everything in it that is needed for the build, but it's a good start.  The kit includes the necessary drill bits, clecos, rivet gun, air drill, bucking bars, 3M Scotch Brite wheels, etc.  I opted for the pneumatic squeezer, and having used it just a little bit at this point, I'd say it is worth every penny.

Grinder - I already had a bench grinder, but ran into a few problems with it.  The Scotch Brite wheels used for deburring are usually 6" wheels (they make 8" wheels, but the hole for the arbor is gigantic and wouldn't work).  My grinder is an 8" grinder.  This isn't a big deal, except that the body of the grinder is big enough that I wouldn't be able to use a 6" wheel without parts hitting the motor housing.  I ended up getting an arbor extension from McMaster Carr to drop the arbor size down to the 1/2" I needed for the wheel, and also to push the wheel far enough away from the motor housing that there shouldn't be much interference when using it.

Scotch Brite wheel mounted and ready to go.

Back Rivet Plate - One of the simplest ways to rivet is to back rivet, where the bucking bar is on the manufactured head of the rivet, not on the side of the shop head.  It's not always possible, but in just the few rivets I've set so far, I can see why it's a go-to technique.  It requires a metal plate for setting the manufactured head of the rivet onto.  I searched high and low for a small piece of steel (you really only need a small size), but no luck.  Then I stumbled onto a welding table that was being sold on Craigslist.  I didn't need the frame or the vice, but it was all being sold for barely more than I would have paid for a 6"x12" chunk of steel, so why not?  Someday I'll learn to weld, and this is a great little table for that.  I pulled the vice and top off and just stored the frame.

I'm putting the steel on my long bench, just to give me room around it.  If push comes to shove, I can move it or even put it on the floor if I need to.  The tape is to indicate where the holes are for the bolts that mount it to the welding table frame.  The last thing I want is to forget they're there and ding a skin by hitting the hole with the rivet gun.  Having this much steel is overkill in a big way, but it'll be awfully nice!

Other Tools - From the picture above, you can see some of the other tools.  Grizzly was out of stock for nearly all of their bench tools, so I settled for a very small 1" belt sander.  From what I've been told, it's hard to live without one of these.  The drill press (thanks Dad) is just behind the bench next to the band saw.  

Shop Setup

 One thing I was lacking in my "shop" was actual work surface.  I had one built in bench alongside the wall, and one 2x8 butcher block top bench.  That wasn't going to be nearly enough for what I needed though.  Like most have done before me, I decided to build a couple of the EAA 1000 benches.  Some of their dimensions didn't make much sense to me (waste of wood), so I ended up making them slightly different.  I wanted to maximize the use of material and get a maximum amount of bench space, so I made two 3'x4' benches and one 2'x4'.  The two larger benches have an overhang for clamping (the EAA plans don't have an overhang for some reason), and I decided to put trim around the edges of the top so a sacrificial top could easily be popped in and out.  The two large benches (you can just barely see the second one to the right in the photo below - it's now been moved) are the same height as each other and my existing 2x8 bench.  The idea is that when I have long parts to deal with, I'll be able to clamp them together to have a single, large surface.  I probably didn't need the smaller 2x4 bench, but since I had the material, figured I might as well build it.  

I ended up putting two drop down casters on each of the big benches - just a few pieces of hinged 2x4 that drop the casters into place when you lift up that side of the table.  This makes them a lot easier to move around, because they are deceptively heavy!  Hindsight is 20/20.  I built the workbenches by just following the plans.  Had I really thought about it, I would have designed them differently.  They are overbuilt in a big way.  I guess I'll still be using them in 30 years.

Flash forward a few weeks below and you'll see what I've added to the space already.  I added some clamp storage to the smaller workbench, and also decided that it'll probably primarily be used as my dimpling table.  I'll explain the C-frame dimpler later, but basically I built up a couple of small platforms and covered them with the cheapest doormats I could find (thank you Dollar Store).  The idea is that these platforms elevate the parts being dimpled, so the parts are at the same height as the dimpling die.

I had some shelving material from Dad, and since I lack storage in a big way, I installed one shelf for keeping material out of the way (have boxes of fiberglass material and some of the wing hardware up there right now).  I still had material left over, so I threw a French cleat on the wall below the shelf and hung a piece of scrap plywood with a short shelf below it.  This will be home for the actual plans to be clipped up, as well as the manual.

It didn't take me long to realize that my best bang for the buck in terms of maximizing space was to keep the two big workbenches together most of the time.  I did some rearranging of other tools and ultimately butted the workbenches up against each other and threw a piece of plywood on top to tie them together.  This gives me a large work surface that I can just drill into and trash without worrying about it.  When I no longer need the large surface, I'll just take the benches apart.

Luckily I have a built in bench on one wall of the garage.  I ripped out the pegboard and put some nailers behind it so I could put up some French cleats.  I have no idea what form all of this will end up taking.  I'm sure I won't really know how I want things organized until I've been working a while.

The Beginning

It only took 20 years of kicking around the idea, but I've finally started down the path of building a plane!  For most people, the first step in this journey would be to learn to fly.  That's just too normal though, so I've decided to build the plane first and learn to fly second instead.  There are just so many restrictions in renting planes that flying when I have to rent has little appeal.  I could buy a plane instead, but whereas with building something I have a brand new plane at the end, in buying a plane for the same money I'd be getting something 50 years old with outdated avionics, torn up upholstery, and a questionable engine.  Plus, I love the idea of building something with my own two hands.  So build it is!

I've looked at a lot of different planes over the years, and while there are many great companies out there, Van's Aircraft has always risen to the top of the list for me.  I waffled over which model to build for a long time, but have settled on the 9A, mostly because I'll be a low time pilot when I start flying it, and it's known for being one of the more docile of the Van's models.  It's still quite fast (cruise speeds of over 180 mph) and has a very low stall speed (lower than just about any cross country plane out there - even the slow trainers like a Cessna 152), so it checks a lot of boxes for efficiency and safety. Plus, I love the look of it.  That decision of building a 9A vs a 7A sounds like it was straight forward, but I'll spare you the mental gymnastics I went through for years and years thinking about which to build.  There are still a lot of decisions I'm going to need to make in the coming months/years: tip-up canopy vs slider, avionics, engine, paint, etc), but at least I have the main model figured out.  Step 1 done.

With the airplane chosen, the next step was to get my personal airplane factory set up in the garage.  Even though I have a very large garage, somehow it's all full, so I only have 1 dedicated bay for tools and airplane building.  It won't be long until I have to kick a vehicle outside to take over a second stall for building - probably once I start working on the wings and fuselage, just due to the size.

Van's kits are very complete, and with modern manufacturing don't require nearly as much scratch built knowhow or skill as in the early years.  That being said, you still need the tools to cut, deburr, drill, rivet, paint, etc.  My shop was always set up for mostly woodwork and auto repair, so I was missing a lot of tools that I would need for building.  Once I had landed on the fact that I would definitely be building a plane, I got to work on the shop itself, building workbenches and buying tools.  The fun began!

I don't plan on going too crazy writing up details about the build here, but it's the easiest way to keep people who are interested informed of progress (mostly dad).  I also need a build log in some form as proof that I built the plane in order to eventually register it as an experimental plane with the FAA.  I'll try to do a few catch up posts to get up to date with where I'm at now, then hopefully keep up in the future.

I still have to pinch myself sometimes to realize this is a reality after all of these years.  My wife has been encouraging me to go ahead and build for years, but I've always struggled with the idea of spending so much time and money on something that is admittedly completely frivolous. But I'm more excited than words can express. The build in itself is going to be incredibly enjoyable for me.  Plus, in the end I'll have a magic carpet that allows Rose and I to make some amazing travel memories together.  That's the part I'm most excited about!