Latest Work Completed Mantua, New Jersey
Original Site:
September 2004
E-mail: usav8or@yahoo.com
The Radical Radial Turtledeck.
May 3, 2014 A little doing ???...
just saying !!!...
Getting close (I say again...) to finishing up the turtledeck. In all honesty, the length of the build wasn't only from me looking for "excellence" but the fact that I had put the cart before the horse and needed to go back and figure the horizontal stab attachment and do it before moving forward with the turtledeck.
I'm moving along quite nicely (he says... tongue-in-cheek). Once it's completed it will be another one of those... satisfying moments. One where you know you've done your best and it shows in the end product. AND it'll be unique looking.
My last session had me gluing up the shell of the tail cone to the spine of the beast. Tonight was the unveiling... and it looks pretty damn good !!!
Side Note: I've been jumping back and forth between pages for the making of this turtledeck. When I did something on the empennage I wrote it up on the empennage page. It's getting to be a little to "jumpy" with the reading. So... I'll be keeping everything I do for the turtledeck on the "turtledeck" page".
Before I can figure out and attach the stingers on the tail cone I need to attach it where it will be going. (believe me... I wanted to just jump into leaving the tail cone loose and moving right ahead with attaching those stringers). AND... to make that happen I need to make a few more tabs. Having known that I would need load of tabs, when I made the first several dozen... I had several more dozen printed up soes I could just cut and paste. And... cut and paste I did.
May 6, 2014 Not looking right ???...
It was just my point of view...
It's all coming together... figuratively and literally.
Welded on the most rear tab for the tail cone (after cutting, grinding, drilling and sanding).
I re-attached the horizontal stabs and the elevators in order to figure out all thats going on in the tail cone area. Three of the five turtledeck stringers end back there... and there is only 3.875inches for it all to come together. Some math needed to be done...
Figured the spacing then went to town marking it up before making the first cut. (glad I did) After making the marks... they didn't look quite right (I was following the angle of the tail cone spine which had all three stingers ending a lot shorter than the base of the tail post.) Readjusted the "vanishing point", re-marked and then clamped them into position. Stood back. AND it looks goooooooood.
I wanted to begin making the cuts in the tail cone but decided to give it my "cooling off" period; letting it sit over-night before moving forward with it. It gives me time to re-think it if I need to re-think it.
They still need to be trimmed and attached to the tail cone.
Looks pretty much like it did before...
to the untrained eye.
May 8, 2014 Figured out what to do...
just don't have the time to do it...
A few things planned for tonight... cut the holes in the tail cone (the ones that the stringers will end in). AND... trim the stringers to fit.
Started cutting the holes in the tail cone without anythng behind the ply. Not good. I need a backer for cutting the holes in the tail cone. It didn't happen, but if I contined down this road I feared it would splinter ply on the back side. Found a backer (a piece of 2x4) and what I thought was going to be a slow process (it was going slow without the backer) turned out to go pretty quick.
Got all six cut out and put it back on the fuselage to see what had to be done next.
Laying the stringers against the tail cone I saw that the stringers, how they were now, weren't going to work. Thought about it for a little while and figured I needed to feather the back-side of the stringers to allow them to lay close to the tail cone AND end inside of the holes. Figured out the feathering but not how to cut the feather. The problem, you see, is that the stringers are NOW attached to the turtledeck. Not an easy tasked to use a sander or bandsaw when it looks like an octopus.
They're marked and I'm now trying to figure out how to do it.
I think I know what to do... just need to have the time to do it. It's close to 9 at night and if I started doing it now... I'd want to rush through it to get it completed tonight. Not a good thing. I'd end up doing it half-assed and having to re-do it. Till the next time...
Notched tail cone.
If you look close enough you can see the markings for feathering.
May 10th and 11th, 2014 Thinking and...
working outside the box...
This turtledeck is a lot more than I had bargained for... it's taking forever to complete. There's quite a few "quick build" kits out there that you can build in fewer hours than I've spent on this. (not compaining... just saying)
Needed to feather the stringers for the turtledeck. Not an easy task when they're attached to the turtledeck. Just a matter of taking my time; not rushing anything, 'cause when I rush there's a good possibility of me screwing things up.
I made the decision to route these down. Found me a nice piece of wood that I could clamp on to each stringer. Clamped, nailed and whatever else I needed to do to keep the stringer in place and then had to weave the router through an octopus of stingers. The first six, ahhhh... the ends of the first two weren't what I was hoping for (a little more feathered at the tip than what I wanted... but easily fixed). The next four... spot on. The top two were another story.
Clamped everything in place, with the front of the turtledeck balance on it's end. Pretty much got through routing the seveth stringer and began to unclamp it when... crack ...the stringer snaps off where I did one of my re-dos. The good thing was that the wood broke and not where it was glued. The bad thing was that I had to re-glue it. Not a big deal... but it's adding time to the build.
The eigth stringer... feathered... no problem.
Ya know... I'll just glue the stinger back in position.. I've got some gussets I need to make so I'm not really killing time. Just a matter of mixing up a little glue and then clamping it in place. Probably took me all of 15 - 20 minutes.
Here are those additional gussets made.
Sundays' stuff...
Moe work on the stringers for the turtledeck-to-tail cone area. I needed to trim off the excess on the tail-end of the stringers (I left a lip there with extra wood so that I could figure out what I wanted to do).
Today I decided that I needed to make a few "tabs: on the rear-most section of these stringers so that I could insert them into the slots I made. Doesn't seem conventional but I'm working and thinking outside of the turtledeck box. These tabs will keep the stringers in the right place and then all I need to do is figure out a good way of keeping them in place.