| 187 | Elevators - 3 Year Milestone | 11/15/2008 |
| | I ordered the plans as a birthday present to myself at 42. This week, give or take a week, marks the 3rd year into this project. Ironically, my brother brought up some bratwurst to celebrate not realizing that bratwurst is to Pietenpol builder as spinach is to Popeye. I launched into rabbeting the pieces, this time using a table saw. The kerf of the blade alone is amost enough to clean it out in one pass and I would have to say it is easier with good results. I tore off the paper thin pieces and touched up with permagrit tools. Next came gusset templates. I make them out of manilla and then trace onto plywood. I started with the general shape shown on the plans which is a little plain. My brother commented that it will be buried inside the fabric, but my Pietenpol will have inner beauty. It may even show when the fabric is shrunk tight. A good radius for corners and rounded parts of the empennage is the radius of a CD. To begin you have to find a CD you don't care about. I found my Andre Rieu CD to be superior as it really takes the stress out of worrying about a good CD. Andre is used exclusively for all corners for consistency as the eye might pickup different radii in close proximity. Adding a few graceful curves changes the look entirely. Templates ready to be transferred to plywood.
Man hours: 3.5 |
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| 186 | Major Parts of Little Piet Done | 11/13/2008 |
| | After a few nights of toiling with the tiny pieces of balsa, the wing and the control surfaces are all done (...well mostly done) Next will be the assembly of the fuselage.
Man hours: 3 |
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| 185 | Little Piet Empennage | 11/5/2008 |
| | Would be nice if the real Piet was as quick a build as the model. Empennage is glued and off the build board. It's amazing how similar the parts look to ones I'm making at home. The nights go by quickly building this model and if nothing else, it helps keep my head in the project while out on this long assignment. I'd recommend this model to anybody. Very straight forward design. Still looking for the electric power system I'm going to use.
Man hours: 2 |
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| 184 | Mini Piet Project | 11/2/2008 |
| | A couple weeks ago I had the good fortune to be in Toronto on business, and caught up with Bill Church. Bill's got a great project going and probably one of the most skilled woodworkers I've met. During the visit Bill showed me his Dumas kit model of a Pietenpol that he's almost done with. I remembered that it was that model that drew me into this project, and I had it at home in an unopened box. For the next couple of weeks I'm going to build the little version of my plane and see how I like the color scheme and get a feel for the flight characteristics. Saturday night I made an 18" x 40" build board out of 1" MDF with a 1/2" layer of Homasote on top. This should be big enough to build everything and small enough to transport back home every weekend. Upon arriving at the hotel this week I set up the build board on a coffee table, cut out the major sections of the plans, taped them down and covered everything with wax paper. One side of the fuselage, the horizontal stabilizer and the elevators are pinned down. It's really amazing how similar this model is to the real Pietenpol. It's a good way to keep engaged when I can't be home and still want to work on the Piet. ...also takes the monotony out of hotel life.
Man hours: 2 |
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| 183 | Elevator Fore/Aft Tapering | 11/1/2008 |
| | When you start examining the elevators on the plans, like all the empennage pieces, dimensions of pieces that meet in corners are different and it looks like something is wrong. The empennage appears to be a hellish nightmare. Actually, there is a taper in the fore/aft pieces. To form this taper I found that drawing lines, rough cutting to them with a tablesaw and then final sanding to exact dimensions is a fairly simple process. No matter how careful you are with the tablesaw, the blade will leave irregular cut depths and circular cut marks. The coarse side of the Permagrit tool made light work of taking the spruce piece down the exact dimension and removes all the cutting irregularities. The fine side makes the sanded sides smooth. I used the 32" tool for most of the sanding and final fine sanding with the small 6" tool. This was the first real use I had for these tools and I think they are perfect in this application and don't seem to clog like sandpaper.
Man hours: 3 |
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| 182 | Elevator Fitted Into Jig | 10/25/2008 |
| | Today's task was to precisely cut the angles of for the rudder travel area of the elevators. Using a manila folder I extended lines on the jig to the manila to duplicate the angle, then cut with a razor blade and straight edge. With the manila angle guide, I set the angle on the saw and cut all the angled ends of pieces that needed this particular angle. When the pieces were placed into the jig the angle left no gaps. With shims in place you can see how the pieces in the jig are a good tight fit.
Man hours: 3 |
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| 181 | Jigging of Elevators | 10/19/2008 |
| | On my 1 day home each week I've been trying to make some progress, however small, on the elevators. Today I didn't have much time but did manage to get the hinge edge, spar and trailing edge pieces all measured and jigged. Measurements for the side pieces are marked on the jig for next Saturday. In the picture the pieces are pushed flush with the top of the jig. Trailing edge and spar will be shimmed to center them with the hinge edge.
Man hours: 1.5 |
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| 180 | Empennage Milling | 10/11/2008 |
| | Found 2 more 1.24" x 1.5" x 16' foot peices of spruce in my stack. I was not sure of the grain so I checked some sources and at 8 rings per inch it seems acceptable. Milled those down with the jointer and planer to get all the empennage pieces cut to their general outer dimensions (ie. no routing of rabbets, or tapering). Now I have all the stock I need to dig into the rest of the elevators, rudder, and vertical stabilizer.
Man hours: 2 |