Saturday, June 24, 2023

Forward Floor Riveting

It's been too long since I've been able to work on the plane!  Today Rose continued to help me rivet the bottom forward fuselage.  Doing this myself would have taken days of awkward positioning and goofy jigs to hold bucking bars, not to mention the sub-par results I would have had.  With Rose's help, we got the entire bottom floor done in about 30 minutes!  Some aspects of building are much easier to do alone, but when it comes to riveting hard to reach areas, a partner makes things go about 1000x faster.  Next up will be the remaining rivets in the forward section, then we'll move to the center and rear fuselage section.  That will be when I'll finally be able to flip the canoe over and have a fuselage to sit in and make airplane noises!



Saturday, June 10, 2023

Forward/Center Section Riveting

While I was waiting for my riveting partner to get home, I treated the inside of the rudder tubes.  I don't have a ton of primer left, so instead of using primer, I used boiled linseed oil for the tubes.  Apparently that is the time tested method for corrosion proofing the inside of the metal in tube/fabric planes.  I just poured a bunch in each tube then let it drain out.  


When Rose got home, we tackled some of the bottom fuselage skin riveting.  She's really good at this whole riveting thing, so it went pretty fast.  In order to stay in her good graces and not lose the help in the long run, we limited the time we spent on it, but we still got the long rows done that attach the forward fuselage to the center section.  Tomorrow we'll work on the forward section floor stiffeners.



Sunday, June 4, 2023

Rudder Pedals & Brakes (2)

Van's calls for using two separate bolts to attach the brake pedal to the rudder bar (not sure what else to call it - it's a pedal, but not really - step on the white bar for the rudder, move up to the actual pedals for brakes).  There have been quite a few reports of issues with that setup though. The pedals are slightly tapered from bottom to the top, which means they don't really sit parallel to the welded tabs on the rudder bars.  With two separate bolts, the pivot on each side is not in the same plane, so some people have had issues with the brakes binding.  There are two solutions that I've found for this - use one long bolt instead of two to keep the pivot point where it needs to be, and add some springs to the brake cylinders to beef up their internal springs for greater power for returning the brakes to neutral.

Bolts that are this long are ridiculously expensive, so instead I decided to go with a 3/16" rod cut to length and threaded/drilled on each end for castle nuts and cotter pins.  I started with a piece of stainless rod, but drilling a 5/64" hole in it for cotter pins was easier said than done.  Because there really isn't much stress on this part, I decided to switch over to brass instead.  It was much easier to work with.  The difference between this setup and the two bolts approach was immediately apparent.  The single rod decreased the friction of the pedals quite a bit.


The next addition may or may not be necessary given how the pedals feel on the rods.  In anticipation of the issue with bolts, I had already jumped on McMaster Carr and bought springs, some plastic collars and some aluminum shaft collars with set screws.  The brake cylinders already have return springs in them, but people say they often don't have quite enough power to completely release the brakes back to neutral. The idea is to add an additional spring to boost that.  The last thing I want is a stuck brake on landing.  I don't really know if all of this will be needed, but it's super easy to remove if not.  


There is still one thing to do to set the cylinders up:  The bottom portion has to be drilled to the attach plate on the pedals.  The gotcha is that the geometry of the rudder bars is not the same since one bar sits behind the other.  So I need to line the part of the bars up that you press on, then decide how much back angle I want on the pedals before I drill the holes for the brakes.  Too little angle and it's super easy to accidentally press the brakes while only wanting rudder.  Too much angle and it's hard to slide up to the brakes when you need them.  I'll do a little more research to see what others have done before I drill.









Thursday, June 1, 2023

Rudder Pedals & Brakes

It's been a while since I've been able to get into the garage and get much work done.  I'm at a bit of a stopping point on riveting the fuselage (waiting for my riveting partner to return from a trip), but I decided to go chip away at some odds and ends.  I pulled out the rudder/brake pedals.  I've been waffling on whether or not I should prime/paint the pedals.  I decided to just do a quick rattle can prime of the angle pieces and back sides of the pedals where things mate together, but left the face of the pedals bare aluminum.  I figure anything on the pedals will rub off with use anyway.


The pedals went together pretty easily.  I started to work on bolting them in place on the bars, but it was obvious pretty quick that things weren't going to line up very well and I'd have to fiddle with it a lot.  My mental energy isn't up to that task today though, so maybe tomorrow.