Here we are on 10 October, integrating the drilling head into the iron bird.
On 23 October, making a set of wing main pins for the first assembly. My 9x20 lathe is in a different city, so I improvised a turning setup using a pair of the rubber mandrels used for drum sanding. That let me put a bit of taper on the nose of the pin.
And here's those pins and a few of the implements for Akaflieg Wing Join convened in Sultan, WA on Halloween weekend.
Doug drove the iron bird up in his truck, and he and Brad assembled a stand for it. Here on 29 October we have one wing indexed to the iron bird.
Two wings in.
We improvised this setup to draw the two wings together tightly against the bushings on the iron bird. Amid all this high-tech stuff, I wasn't expecting to use a Spanish Windlass.
But then, nobody expects the Spanish windlass!
The drill press seemed a good idea on the face of it, but actually turned too fast and with too little torque to get the job done.
So most of the heavy drilling was done with Brad's 1/2" chuck variable-speed hand drill. The trick, we found, was a custom-grind for our drill bits that master machinist Jim Flower showed me. Jim also did a bunch of other little machining jobs for us during the Sultan akaflieg, and so rescued us several times when we would otherwise have been stuck.
Here the left-side hole is drilled and its bushings are installed, and the right-side hole is freshly drilled.
Potting in the right-side bushings on 30 October.
Both bushings in and cured on 31 October, wings supported on their pins.
So we plugged the wings into Brad's fuselage and found a few minor interference issues.
Files and sandpaper to the rescue!
Wings on, pins in.
Stands out, no visible means of support.
You can also track the project on Facebook.
Homebuilt aviation is not for folks who don't try things at home.
page updated 1 November 2010 all text and graphics copyright (c) 2010 HP Aircraft,
LLC