Electric work on the shop today

One of my clients is an electrician and he’s coming by today to do some work on the shop. Before I put up drywall on the far wall, I wanted to get some outlets installed over there. Also, he is going to run a dedicated circuit to those outlets, install some switches and hang a few shop lights.

My folks are coming through town tonight, and Dad said he would bring down the propane heater that he has in his hangar so I can heat the shop with it. Aren’t Dads great?

Rudder ready to prime!

I had a little help from Isaiah – in the form of trying to drive his tricycle over the rudder skins – and now nearly all the rudder components are ready to prime and assemble. The only remaining thing to do is to countersink both sides of the trailing edge piece. I will use a trailing edge piece from an elevator underneath the piece to keep it perpendicular to the countersink bit while on the drill press.

Deburring, dimpling and drywall delivery

Super bowl Sunday and we are all snowed in. We have about ten inches on the ground. It snowed all weekend but today was a beautiful day to dig out.

Last night, I took all of the rudder components – ribs, spar and skins – inside the house and sat down in the family room to deburr the rivet holes. It sounds so simple, but that is not something I had the luxury of doing when the project was at the hangar.

After putting the snowblower through the paces, I decided to setup the dimpling c-frame in the basement where I have a little more room. I was able to get nearly all the holes dimpled in both skins. I’m very pleased with the results from the cleaveland c-frame tool. The dimples are very crisp and it’s not too loud at all. I also like using the pneumatic squeezer to dimple along the edges, but it’s a lot easier to put a hole where one shouldn’t be when you’re using the squeezer.

I met Rick Blaes at the Home Depot (a.k.a. “Homer’s”). We picked up a bunch of drywall and related supplies so I can finish the garage this week. Hopefully I can get around to that and still make some progress on the plane.

More on the Rudder

I final-drilled all of the rudder and disassembled it per the plans. Unfortunately, there were a couple of places where the clecoes must have been rubbing against something while we moved, and that left some small deformations around those particular holes. It’s nothing major, just an annoyance. I’m building an airplane and every rivet doesn’t need to be perfect.

I used the edge roller from Avery Tools to put a slight inward bend on the trailing edges of both rudder skins. This will help the skins to sit down tight when the trailing edge is riveted.

Another few hours of deburring, cleaning and priming and it should be time to rivet the rudder together. Then I will get a chance to try out my new back-rivet plate (a 4-foot piece of cold-rolled steel I picked up from a local steel supplier).

It’s not spectacular, but you can see the photo below of the workshop.  I took the picture with my iPhone using “Pano”, and app that takes multiple pictures and merges them together to form a panoramic photo.  The ceiling looks like it’s bent, but that’s just an illusion from the merging of the photos.  As you can see, the shop is cozy, but it works!

Insulated the workshop

I stopped by home depot yesterday and picked up 6 rolls of faced insulation 32′ in length. If I’m going to take advantage of the project being at the house all year long, I’m going to need some more protection between me and the elements.

It took me about three hours to get the entire garage insulated. The difference is incredible. When we left for church this morning it was 20 degrees outside but it was 42 in the garage. Can’t wait to see how it feels in there once I get a heater going!

Sometime next week Rick and I will pickup some drywall from the depot and then we will tackle the rudder.