Glued and nailed up 5 Upper Wing Aileron ribs.
YES ! Five more to go !
Apr 11
3.1hrs
Fitted up, glued and nailed the remaining 5 Upper Wing
Aileron ribs. Re-routed one of the nose blocks. Wasn't happy with one that was already routed.
Apr 12
3hrs
Practiced an hour welding. Used the #5 tip.. Worked with the #3
also. Spent the hour relearning what I had lost from lack of practicing. Went down in the shop and worked on re-working the
Lower Wing tip rib. Spent two hours doing that. One is sitting in a temporary jig with the correct space between the spars.
Three more to go... one more Lower and two Upper rib tips
Apr 16
1.1hrs
Laid out the pattern for the vertical tail.
Apr 17
2.6hrs
Made the jig to bend the tubing for the rudder. Screwed it down to my table
and started bending the tubing. I spent a little over two hours making a sad looking rudder. Back to work on another try tomorrow. Mark this down as
practice time.
Apr 18
1.2hr
Modification of Lower Butt rib.
Apr 22
1hr
Unhappy with modification of Lower Butt Ribs.
Made correction to Butt Rib pattern. Re-cut both nose blocks.
Apr 23
1.3hrs
Cut and fitted capstrips and additional gussets for
both Lower Wing Butt ribs.
Apr 25
1.9hrs
Glued up one of two Lower Butt Ribs. Cleaned up the two Upper Wing Nose blocks to
re-use. Oops... forgot that I'm not going to use them for the 3-pc Upper Wing. Practice welding for .7 hrs.
Hit 300 hours !
Apr 26
2.3hrs
Took the one tip rib out of jig, flipped and glued
on gussets. Fitted up capstrips and glued gussets onto the first side of the 2nd tip rib. Spent .8 hrs practicing
welding.
Apr 28
.7hrs
Failed to place weights on trailing edge gusset. Being concerned
that it may not have been properly bonded I dremel tooled it off. Cut and glued new gusset. Flipped sanded and glued all gussets on 2nd side. Made sure that
I placed weights on the trailing edge gusset. :)
Apr 30
1.3hrs
Practiced pushing the puddle tonight. Feeling good about
adjusting the blend of oxy/act. Getting some nice weld lines.
May 1
1.2hrs
Practiced more on the welding technique. Time flies when you're having
fun.
May 3
2hrs
More welding practice. Learning something new
each time I pick up the torch.
May 7
2.2hrs
Practice practice practice. More welding practice.
May 10
1.5hrs
Fitted up capstrips and glued up first side of first Upper Wing Tip Rib. It's a re-do of
the ones I did earlier.
May 14
1.6hrs
Took above rib out of jig. Glued gussets onto nose block.
Fitted up 2nd and final Upper Wing Tip Rib into jig. Glued capstrips and gussets. Out to the garage workshop for 1/2 hour
of welding practice.
May 16
2.7hrs
Sanded and glued up gussets on 2nd side of both Upper Wing Tip Ribs.
Spent about an hour going over my 3-pc wing drawings. Missing drawings per the discussion I had with the guys on the biplane forum.
I need to call Steen tomorrow. Practiced welding for 1.2 hrs.
May 17
1.5hrs
Finished glueing up the last Upper Wing Tip Rib.
There are two more ribs that I need to make but these are made specifically for the 3-piece wing. .9 hrs welding... more practice.
Finished glueing up the last rib! 317.5 hrs into the project.
May 19
1hr
Filing down edges of wing ribs, trimming off excess
gussets and glue. Taking the Dremel tool to a few of the gussets that I'm not happy with and replacing gussets.
May 20
1.5hrs
Trimming off excess glue and over hanging gussets from
Wing Ribs.
May 21
3.0hrs
2.6 hrs... continuation of trimming ribs. Another 2 hrs and I think I'll
be finished with it. Spent .4 hrs preparing tubing for welding pracitice.
May 23
2.6hrs
Still trimming gussets and excess glue off the ribs. Spent some time out in
the garage workshop welding up thin-walled tubing to thin-walled tubing. It's going to take some practice getting use to these angles I need to
position the flame and the weld rod. Just a matter of time.
May 24
2.3hrs
Almost there. Trimmed additional ribs. Glued
misc. gussets on several ribs that I wasn't happy with.
May 25
.2hrs
It wasn't much time but it's something. Cleaned off the excess glue
and overhanging gussets on a rib.
May 29
2.1hrs
More cleaning off of glue and overhanging gussets. Finished with that task, now
I need to make a few small jigs to finish the trailing edge of the ribs the exact same for each style rib.
May 30
2hrs
Reading the Skybolt Builders manual that Randy has put together.
Manual can be found by going to biplaneforum.com. Reading up on the ailerons, wings
and spars.
May 31
2.2hrs
Worked on trimming down and shaping the Upper and Lower
Wing Butt Ribs. Cut and fitted plexi patterns to the jigs that I made the ribs from. I then laid these plexi pieces up to the
nose blocks and TE (trailing edge) of the ribs, marked, then filed and sanded to shape. Left the TE a little over sized so that I can
trim to fit once the bows are attached.
Jun 3
.7hrs
You guessed it. More rib trimming.
Jun 4
2.3hrs
Ahhh.. finished trimming the ribs. YES !
Checked all pieces to make sure that they have all been finished off. Nice. Checked the tip ribs spars openings to
the spar openings of the standard ribs just to be sure that they are all in perfect alignment. AAUGH ! The spar openings are OFF !
DAMN !
Jun 6
2.2hrs
Welding Practice. Learning to weld thin-walled tubing to
thin-walled tubing.
Jun 7
1.3
Welding practice again. Working at getting a good weld on thin-walled
to thin-walled tubing joints. Still a few hours away from getting nice consistent welds.