Heated the cross tubes/vertical tubes slightly so they wouldn't be pushing on the axles. Tacked the verticals to the axles. Notched streamlined tubes to fit better.
Feb 12
1.4hrs
Tweaked the streamline tubes to fit better. Welded streamlined tubes to cross tubes. (need more O2)
Feb 13
1.7hrs
Tacked streamline tubes to axles. Welded up 3/4 of one weld.
Feb 15
1.5hrs
Continued welding the first axle of the right gear.
Feb 17
2.1hrs
Test fit the right gear. Needed to make a slight adjustment with heating the front fitting. Started welding up second gear.
Feb 19
2.2hrs
Welded up the insided angle joint of the cross tube and streamline tube on both gear legs.
Feb 20
1.8hrs
Tweaked the axle on the left main gear. Came close to completely welding the back tube/fitting to the front tube. Two small welds to go.
Feb 21
.8hrs
Started welding up the second back tube/fitting to front tubes.
Feb 22
.9hrs
Finished what I started yesterday. Man, did THAT need A LOT of heat!
Feb 23
1.9hrs
Check both axles for movement. Ground off, and down, the overhanging axle so that I can weld on the strap.
Feb 25
.8hrs
Ground off the back of the other axle. Ground it down so that I can weld on the strap too.
Feb 26
1.2hrs
Tacked and welded on the first strap; the strap for one of the axles.
Feb 28
2.1hrs
Tacked and welded on the second strap (same one as I did on Feb 26.) on the other axle. Also needed to finish welding on the back tube to the axle.
Feb 29
1.4hrs
Worked on the left gear cross-tube. Used the grinder to get a better shape on the end then heated and tacked on the strap. Welded up approx. 1/2 the strap. Needs to cool before grinding away some excess.
Mar 3
2.1hrs
Ground down strap on cross/streamline tube. Finished welding up. Heated and tacked strap on second cross/streamline tube. Started welding it up.
Mar 4
1hr
Grind and weld the second cross/sreamline tube strap.
ditto
1.8hrs
Heated and tacked on the two remaining straps; the ones on front bushings.
Mar 5
1.3hrs
Welded the strap on the first of two front bushings/attachments.
Mar 6
1.8hrs
Welded most of the 2nd strap to the 2nd bushing/attachment area. Overhang a little more than I liked on the one side so I ground it down. Making a filler piece to weld to that area of strap.
Mar 7
1.2hrs
Fitted and welded on that "splice" to the final strap. Reamed both front bushings of slag and then attached to the fuselage and dropped lines to check for movement. Each moved in slightly; about 1/8" each. Movement in... not bad. YES !!!
Mar 8
1.1hrs
Cleaned axle near weld so that I could slip on brake backing plates. Tapped on the plates. Looked at Cleveland brakes for quite awhile... deciding on how to mount them. Need to weld on plates tomorrow.
Mar 9
1.1hrs
Welded on the brake backing plates. The main gear is FINISHED !!!
Mar 10
N/A
Worked on getting the wheels and brakes up to speed so that I can put them on the axles. Probably spent 5 hours on this... which I ain't adding to the "build" of the biplane.
Mar 11
N/A
Spent several hours working on getting the wheels/tires on the gear. About 9PM I rolled it out of the garage.
Mar 12
2hrs
Back to reading; stringer stand-offs and the wings are next.
Mar 13
2hr
Pulled plans to see where reversers, idler arm and control column are located. Test fitted in fuselage. Still need to weld in fuselage. Pulled out one of Tony B's books and read up on stringer stand-offs.
Mar 14
1.7hrs
Started welding in the tubes for the first reversers. Spent the rest of the night cutting cardboard to start giving the fuselage a shape.
Mar 15
1.4hrs
Exact placement and tacking in of of 2nd reverser and idler arm.
ditto
N/A
Spent about 1.5 hours looking at the fuselage, looking at some TravelAir Mystery Ship photos and line drawings. Thinking of how I'm going to shape it.
Mar 16
1.2hrs
Cut rudder pedal axles for both front and back pedals. Looked a fuselage to see what I still needed to make/buy for outfitting fuselage.
ditto
N/A
Spent several hours figuring out and looking for the bearings for the pushrods to tail.
Mar 17
2hrs
Worked with the CAD program to start shaping the fuselage so that I can start making the formers.
Mar 18
4hrs
CAD work. I've got the shape and I'm ready to make formers.
Mar 20
3hrs
Spent time reading up on, looking at and figuring out formers and stringers.
Mar 21
3hrs
Figuring out how many and where the formers need to go, length of material, how many stringer stand offs and where they need to go. Ordered material for formers and stand offs.
Mar 22
1.3hrs
Set up the shop table to do tube bending. Formed up the first upper former.
Mar 24
4hours
Figuring out how to build up the formers and where I can place them, given the location of other items that need to be put in and taken out of the fuselage; the fuel tank, etc.
Mar 25
3.6hrs
Solved the mystery of how to attach the forward formers (the oversized ones) and made the jig for the leading edge of the tail and then formed it.
Mar 26
.9hrs
Bent 2nd former for forward fuselage... illiteration, eh?
Mar 27
.5hrs
During lunch today I did some CAD work; redesign of stand-offs (made them scalable up to 7" long for the wider fuselage). Printed off about 40 of them.
ditto
2.4hrs
Formed the first bottom former for Station 26.o. Rough cut four stringer stand-offs.
Mar 28
1.8hrs
.8 hours bending up another former, 1 hour cutting out, filing and sanding, with 150 grit, four more stand-offs. Still need to sand with 400 grit.
Mar 29
1.5hrs
Looked over former/stand-off layout. Determined how far back to come with the sheet metal and where formers and stand-offs will go.
Mar 30
1.5hrs
Figuring out lengths of stand-offs with the CAD.
Mar 31
3.4hrs
Cut the patterns for the 3 inch stand-offs. Glued the patterns to the 4130 .o32 sheet blanks, rough cut then ground down and filed to size. Took 150 sandpaper to them.
Apr 1
3.4hrs
Two work sessions today totaling 3.4 hours. Cut, ground, filed and sanded all ten 2 inch stand-offs. Tonight I spent an hour putting the bend in all the ones that had been sanded.
Apr 2
1.6hrs
Remade (2) 5 inch and (2) 6 inch stand-offs; from blank to making the bend.
Apr 3
1.5hrs
Made four more stand-offs; (2) 5 inch and (2) six inch.
Apr 4
1.8hrs
Made (8) additional stand-offs. All were 4 inch long.
Apr 7
1.4hrs
Sanded and bent the (10) 4" stand-offs already cut out and filed.
ditto
1.8hrs
Cut and grounded down the blanks for (16) 4 inch stand-offs. Still need to be sanded and bent to shape, then sanded again.
Apr 8
2.5hrs
Filed, sanded and bent the (16) stand-off blanks I cut yesterday.
Apr 9
2.3hrs
Start to finish... seven additional stand-offs. I'm now finished with the stand-offs as far as I have them planned.
ditto
1hr
Cut the four pieces of tubing for the fairleads.
Apr 11
.5hrs
Clean up and set-up of jig for the upper wing center section.
Apr
12
.5hrs
Spent some time looking over the plans for the upper wing center section. Need to get the metal parts welded up and tubes cut before I can start locking things together.
Apr 13-19
N/A
Thinking about how to build the upper wing center section.
Apr 22
2.5hrs
Cleaned the epoxy off the upper wing center section front and back spars. Made a set of temporary spars for the upper wing ribs to see how they aligned with the center section spars when they were threaded on the ribs.
Apr 23
1.3hrs
Measured and cut the triangle support blocks for the upper wing center section. Used on the ribs.
Apr 24
1.1hrs
Did research on the upper wing center section on the biplane forum... looking for those gotchas. Also checked the spacing of the upper wing spar spacing to the center section and they are almost dead on.
Just reached 2000 hours on the build !
Apr 25
1.5hrs
Worked on the wing center section. Need to make an adjustment to the span build ups on the front spar.
Apr 26
1hr
Measured, cut and test fit the spar build ups for the upper wing center section.
Apr 28
.9hrs
Glued up the spar build up for the upper wing center section from spar.
Apr 29
.5hrs
Filed and sanded off excess glue from spar build ups.
ditto
1.2hrs
Notched and fitted five nose ribs to front spar for upper wing center section.
Apr 30
.3hrs
Trimmed up a few support blocks for the nose ribs on the upper wing center section..
May 2
1.2hrs
Cut angle on spar build ups then glued them to the fron spar of the upper wing center section.
May 3
.4hrs
Cleaned the glue off the sides of the spar (from when I glued on the build ups.)
May 5
2.1hrs
Glued on nose ribs to upper wing center section front spar.
May 6
.3hrs
Need to make an adjustment to one of the ribs on the spar. (head scratching...)
May 7
.7hrs
Working on the upper wing center section spars.
May 8
1hr
Routed both sanding jig patterns for nose ribs on front spar of upper wing center section.
May 9
1hr
Tried using routed jig patterns for alignment and sanding. Not working. Thinking that I'll route 10 new nose ribs and cap the 5 existing ones. I'll be adding about 1 pound to the weight.
May 10
2hrs
Routed 10 nose ribs. Will look at sandwiching the existing ribs next session. Need to come up with a way to align all the pieces.
May 13
1.3hrs
Marked and cut the bottom out of the routed ribs so that they'll be able to fit around the 45 degree supports.
May 15
1.4hrs
Tacked new nose ribs into place and marked high spots on existing nose ribs. Started to file them down. Doing this before aligning the outer two and striking lines.
May 16
1.1hrs
Filed down the remaining original nose ribs. Struck a line to line them all up - to make sure all are in line. This didn't work. Need to use a metal straight edge.
May 17
.9hrs
Decided to file back the other side of the nose ribs.
May 19
3.1hrs
Finished aligning nose ribs. Mixed up glue and tacked them into position.
ditto
1hr
Not liking what I did, I cut off all the nose ribs and started routing out the corner blocks and remaining ply to start over again.
May 20
1.3hrs
Routed out the remaining four nose ribs from the spar.
May 21
.8hrs
Routed new nose ribs for the upper wing center section spar.
May 22
1.1hrs
Drilled the lightening holes in the nose ribs.
May 23
1hr
Notched bottoms of nose ribs to fit between the build ups on the spar.
May 25
1.3hrs
Test fit new nose ribs in place to level and square up with each other. Tweaked the notches, Nailed corner blocks temporarily in place to hold nose ribs.
May 28
.3hrs
More tweaking of the nose ribs. Ready to glue and lock in position.
May 29
1.3hrs
Glued and tacked in nose ribs onto upper wing center section spar.
Jun 1
1.3hrs
Looked at plans to figure out the plywood for the nose rib cover aka leading edge. Needed to make one of the nose ribs wider so that I could butt the plywood in that area so I sandwiched the nose rib with two pieces of 1/4 inch ply.