Stefan's Volksplane Construction Log

More Work on the Fuselage Sides

Sun, 05 Aug 2007 02:21:15 GMT

The last step in constructing the fuselage sides is to install the upper longeron doublers in the cockpit area. First it was necessary to remove the excess glue where the longerons attach to the skins so that the doublers could be mounted against the longerons. I did this with a chisel and mallet, first with the flat side of the chisel against the longeron, and then with the bevelled side against the skin.

Fuselage Construction: Sides

Fri, 03 Aug 2007 02:26:24 GMT

Fuselage Construction: Sides, covering the period from 2007-Apr-12 to 2007-Jul-29.

Fuselage Contruction: Firewall and Sternpost

Fri, 03 Aug 2007 02:25:02 GMT

Fuselage Construction: Firewall and Sternpost, covering the period from 2007-Jan-19 to 2007-Apr-04.

Completing the Main Bulkheads

Sun, 14 Jan 2007 15:30:34 GMT

I'm back! In a series of building sessions, I glued the remaining gussets and webs onto F-3 and F-4. Each web took a bit over an hour. There's quite a lot involved in gluing a web: mix the epoxy, spread the epoxy evenly, put the web in place, and then use lots of clamps, being careful not to misalign the web while tightening the first few clamps. One trick I used was to first clamp the web or gusset in place without glue, and drill a counter sunk hole in the location where the wing-attach bushings will eventually go. When gluing, a screw in this hole keeps the piece precisely positioned (but I still had to be careful it didn't rotate).