Latest Work Completed Mantua, New Jersey
Original Site:
September 2004
E-mail: usav8or@yahoo.com
June 25, 2007 going back and forth... the fine art of tweaking
A little over three hours spent in the workshop tonight. Still working on the first of two stabilizers. About a half hour into the session I had the shape of it purty darn close
to the pattern. Spent an additional 3 hours tweaking it.
As with all these new skill sets we learn, we're "craftsmen" by the time we've completed the task. Take your time and don't rush the work you're doing. Bend less than more each time you bend the tubing. (In other words... don't get crazy bending too much at one time, on each bend. You'll be doing a lot of that unbending if you do.) The trick is to work on the entire length of the bend. Work on it as a whole.
You begin to read the component you're making, seeing where it needs to be bent and where it needs to be un-bent.
A lot of tweaking going on tonight. That pretty much sums up the entire build. Get it close then bring it in one little step at a time. In the end it's less time than going
guns a blazing and flying past the point of no return. I do that enough when I'm taking my time.... too focused on one part of the component I'm working on instead of looking at the
entire piece each time I step back to make sure that I'm staying on track.
Tonight I began to feel this bond with my airplane. Holding, forming that piece of tubing, I felt something more than building an inanimate object. Kinda of hard to discribe the feeling.
I listened to my own advice ( I remember to do that on occasion) and have a nice looking leading edge for the first stabilizer. Let's see if I can repeat the success I just had with another fine looking piece. It should go
a little bit quicker since I've learned from the first piece. we'll see...
June 26, 2007 expanding on the above transcention (is that a word?)
I posted this in the biplane forum just recently. I thought that it captured why I was doing this... even though I didn't relaize it before.
Last night I was forming the leading edge of one of the Skybolt's stabilizers. It was about 12:30 in the morning. It was my second night of working on the same piece.
Over bending, rebending, over bending again. It was at a point that I was real close to getting the right fit after working through a lot of that learning we're always talking about.
Somewhere between taking that 7/8ths .049 4130 tube out of the bending jig and sizing it up to the stabilizer pattern for the umpteenth time I got the feeling that I was doing something
more than bending a piece of tubing. I paused for a moment trying to capture the thoughts that I had. Hard to explain... hard to put into words... actually neither of them would do it justice.
August 7, 2007 I've said it before...
and I'm saying it again.
The more I do on my Skybolt, the more I want to do.
Went down to the work shop last night, figuring I'd put the blocks in for all the
metal ribs that I bought from one of the guys from the biplane forum awhile ago.
The more that I looked at them, the more I was unhappy with how they looked. Sure,
they would have been OK to use... I don't want OK.
To begin with, not all of the ribs were there. I still had to produce a few of them.
If I was going to go to the trouble of producing a few of them... might as well produce
all of them. Not sure if there is any logic in that, but I figured what the hell. Guess it
falls into my "the more I do on my Skybolt..." theory.
Spent the rest of the evening measuring lengths and figuring out what I needed to order.
Jumping subjects here.
Hopefully I'll be hearing back from Steen Aero in a day or two about the placement of the bungee
truss. Since I'll be getting back to that I might as well order the instrument panel material so
I can play around with it... another thought... I might as well order the fuel tank material while I'm
at it. (and it all started off with me just ordering some material to make the metal ribs...)
Spent tonight drawing out all four of the different metal ribs on my DeltaCAD program. (great little program for about $35.00)
To get these ribs bent I was going to make a bending brake that I found the plans for online. Total cost... estimated materials, $75.00. I checked Harbor Freight and they sell one all put together for $70.00. The plans built
bending brake doesn't look so good after all. It would probably take an entire day to build it after running around getting all those parts.
Looks like I'll be taking a trip to Harbor Freight this weekend.
Note: The above watch and violin are from Free Digital Photos