Tag: Fuselage Page 2 of 3

Sanding (Painting)

On August 12, 2016

Took a while for an update, but Oshkosh and visiting family made for a pretty hectic end to July and beginning of August.

As of this writing, the fuselage has it’s white top coat complete. Now it’s time for masking and sanding in preparation for the second half that will be red. Not much else to report besides that.

The painting has been a learning curve, but it’s starting to come together. The biggest hurdle is the time between spraying products. Usually means waiting a day and when you’re just painting one part, it seems like eternity.

I haven’t tracked my hours very closely in this section of work, but I’ll make a guess about what it seems like it has been.

Hope to have pictures of the plane with red on it by the end of next week. Till then, here are some of the white. We did get orange peel in the finish, but I’m satisfied with how it turned out and I have a feeling it will fly just fine.

(30 h)

It’s getting serious

By Ryan

On July 21, 2016

In S-20

Last update prior to Oshkosh.

Fuselage is ready for a light sanding followed by the topcoat colors after I get back from my summer tour in a week and a half or so.

I’m also finishing up my wing rack build today and tomorrow so I can transport/store the wings more compactly.

See you at OSH!

(6 h)

Sanding

By Ryan

On July 19, 2016

In S-20

The painting process is in full swing at the moment. Between life obligations and other flying obligations, it takes forever to get anything done, but it is getting done.

Currently we have a horizontal stabilizer and fuselage that has all the coats of EkoFill on it and is ready for EkoPrime. Took a decent amount of trial and error to get everything working right and we did a good bit of sanding to get some runs out.

Brushing the EkoFill on the fuselage took a good 4 hours give or take 30 minutes.

The EkoPrime should be on this week and then we can start shooting color (EkoPoly) the next day. I’m not sure when this will happen. I’d like to say this week too, but we’re closing in on Oshkosh and I’ve got other things to take care of before the end of the week.

In somewhat unrelated news, I’m building a wing rack so I can transport my two wings and store them easier.

(20 h)

It is done! (part of it)

By Ryan

On July 5, 2016

In S-20

The day has finally arrived where the fuselage is completely covered in fabric and ready for paint. I thought for sure it wouldn’t take 3 weeks since my last update, but summer seems to extend all timelines.

The objective is to move the fuselage this afternoon to get ready for paint and then hopefully start painting in the next week or so. We shall see how that timeline works out.

I was trying to think of some helpful covering hints or tips for the fuselage and can;t find anything groundbreaking except for the patches that go on the rear of the door frame. RANS instructs you to place patches and then tapes, but this is one area where I think they want you to put the patches on after you place the tapes. I did not and I don’t think it’s a huge problem, but I think it would look cleaner.

The areas in question are where other tapes start/end. A patch over the top of these tapes would finish those junctions off very nicely and then you would place the tape that goes around the door frame over that patch.

The other was a recommendation from another S-20 builder to use some bias tape for the vertical stabilizer transition area. That worked out great and I would recommend it.

I’m going to finish a horizontal stabilizer, aileron, and maybe cover the doors to get a few pieces to get my painting skills adjusted.

(16 h)

It’s neverending

By Ryan

On June 15, 2016

In S-20

Still slugging my way though the fuselage covering. All the work has been more sporadic than I would have liked.

The current state of the fuselage is that all the patches are on and I’m maybe halfway through the tapes.

Nothing too remarkable to report for this, so if there are any questions or suggestions, bring them up.

On another note, I received my first batch of painting supplies from Stewart Systems. I’m going to try and attempt a RANS scheme that was on the first SLSA. I;m going to replace the orange with Stewart’s Firethorn Red.

I’m also still learning the best way to put on patches and tapes with the glue. My technique has improved a lot and I think I may be able to go back with some diluted glue and soak it into the spots that aren’t a consistent color.

(12 h)

So that’s what it looks like

By Ryan

On May 28, 2016

In S-20

Covering the fuselage has been going pretty well. It’s time consuming, but it’s nothing crazy.

I’ve been working on and off throughout the past week to try and keep making steady progress. As of tonight, all the sides of the fuselage are now attached. The right side needs to have the initial shrink done and then all sides can be shrunk to 350 degrees.

I’ve learned a few things through covering the fuselage and using Stewart Systems. I’ve had a few cases where the fabric would come un tacked when I would brush glue down through the top of the fabric in an area that I had previously tacked down with the iron per Stewart Systems procedure. I think the issue is that my iron wasn’t hot enough or I didn’t have enough glue underneath the fabric for it it really adhere. This didn’t cause big problems, but I did have to pull the fabric and then tack it down again after the glue had dried. If anyone is confused, shoot me a message/email and I can go through it in more detail.

The next part that took some learning and I still don’t feel great about doing is the transition from the top center former and the vertical stabilizer. So the procedure I used seemed to work ok. To preface this, I followed the same sequence as in the RANS manual. I attached the fabric to the bottom longeron completely and then started tacking the fabric into place around the cabin and working my way towards the baggage compartment. I then attached the fabric around the vertical stabilizer. This let me get everything in place and then trim all the excess fabric off with some degree of certainty that I had enough everywhere. Then I started working on tacking down the fabric onto the top center former working towards the transition. What I found was that I did need to slit the fabric around the radius area, but I didn’t have to cut all the way to the tube to get the transition to lay down. It still took a lot of work and I’m not completely happy with the amount of wrinkles I have, but I think it will look better after the final shrink. Overall, it worked out pretty well and I ended up with good coverage over the vertical stabilizer tube in that area.

The other interesting part it the baggage compartment. I also followed RANS here as well. I got all the fabric for the side in question fully glues down and all the wrinkles out of the bonded area. I then applied some glue the inside of the baggage window area so the fabric wouldn’t fray when I cut. Of course enough fabric must be left to wrap to the inside of the baggage window frame and glued down. This worked out pretty well and the fabric played down on the window frame quite nicely during the initial shrink.

I have some decent wrinkles, but I’m planning on them being taking care of during the shrink. I didn’t shrink at 250 degrees on the left side because I was concerned with pulling the top center former out of alignment. Now that both sides are on I can at least shrink each side equally. That’s the plan at least.

I’ve got lots of pictures, but it’s late and I don’t have them readily available to upload. I’ve been making lots of time lapse videos as well so I’ll be posting those as well. If you have questions about pictures, let me know. They all make sense to me because of the order and I did it myself, but that doesn’t really help others sometimes.

(15.5 h)

Looks like we’ve got ourselves an airplane

By Ryan

On May 25, 2016

In S-20

Finally have started covering. It took a while to get the fuselage ready to go and cleaned up, but it’s finally going.

I put anti chafe tape around any sharp edge and exposed rivet I could find. I may have gone a little overboard, but I’d rather not worry about it afterwards.

Started with the bottom of the fuselage first. Nothing too hard, but it took forever to make all the cuts. I felt like I wasn’t making any progress at all. Cutting the fabric to size isn’t hard, but it’s very nerve wracking for me. We’re using Stewart Systems covering process, so we had glue on the frame and then tacked it down with an iron to hold it in place so we could work some big wrinkles out. After it was fitted, I brushed glue down through the fabric and wiped off the excess following the Stewart Systems procedure.

One thing I noticed was that as I brushed glue down into the fabric, the fabric was coming off of the tube. I tried tacking it down with a hotter temperature on the iron and that seemed to solve the issue, so I think my iron was just not hot enough to really tack the fabric down. I looked over the fabric carefully after everything had dried and it was stuck on there pretty good, so I’m not worried that it didn’t adhere. Also, the fabric to fabric joint is the important one which will be next.

For the later part of my Tuesday evening, I started on the left side of the fuselage. Fortunately I had a friend stop by just in time to help me cut the fabric to length, We then applied glue to the bond area for the left side and then began to fit the fabric and start trimming it down. I finished up the night with only one more big cut to make because I was getting tired and didn’t want to fuss with the vertical stabilizer transition.

(7.5 h)

Hey Look, it’s a plane!

By Ryan

On May 16, 2016

In S-20

Finally got back into the swing of airplane building last weekend and this past weekend. Tonight will be another build session, but I’m accomplishing a decent amount of little things, so I don’t want to get too far behind.

The last things I had to do to wrap up the boot cowl area was to fit-up the instrument panel and visor.

I started the visor and it went together relatively simply. It’s not even all the way across, but I’ll be attaching some sort of fabric to it and the ends are around 1/8″ different on each side. (I will be waiting for people to mention these differences when the plane is flying. I figure it’s a way to gauge readership. ha ha)

After that was done, I drilled all the pilot holes in the instrument panel blank to 3/16″. I then drill one hole in the panel frame to 3/16″ so I could attach the blank and then transfer drill the remaining holes. One thing I noticed when putting the blank on was that it seems like it is just a hair too wide, so I had to fuss with it for a half a second to get it past the tubes and flush with the panel frame. I didn’t want to shave material off the side of the blank, because the holes are pretty close to the edge already, but if anyone has some thoughts I’d be happy to hear what everyone else has noticed.

After the panel frame was drilled out to 3/16″, I went and enlarged all the holes on the panel blank to 5/16″ because they will receive some rubber grommets. Don’t enlarge the panel frame holes lest you want to buy more aluminum.

After that was done, I had to enlarge a few holes on the boot cowl skins and I added an extra two holes where the top side skin rivets to the side skin. This seems to be a popular addition; including the factory.

One thing I do have to modify for sure is the fuselage tube exits on the top side skins. My skins are hitting the tube, so I will remove some material to get rid of that. The one thing to be careful of is not to remove too much or else you would need to make new closeouts for that area.

After all that I removed the entire boot cowl assembly for storage while the fuselage gets covered and painted.

Next was to get the fuselage on the rotating stands so I could move it around myself and to ease with covering. One thing I noted though was that I’m not sure how I can cover/paint the tail with it on the rotator unless I just made a very bulky mount back there. I’ll be in contact with some other builders or RANS, but if anyone gets the notion to speak up, I’d like to hear some solutions.

With it up on the stands, I was then able to start on the tasks I needed to complete prior to covering. The one I started and almost finished this past weekend was upgrading my seat tracks. RANS changed the seat track system shortly after I bought my kit. I didn’t see the new ones until I had riveted my system in and I had sort of accepted what I had. After seeing another builder’s plane with the new style though, I really wanted to switch them over. RANS has been using the old style on a lot of planes for a while I was told and I don’t think there is a safety issue. My main reason was it made me feel better with the design of the new tracks holding me in the plane.

That means I had/have to drill out 22 stainless steel rivets. I failed at this task on some wing rivets, but the new found knowledge meant I was able to make pretty quick work of them. At least as quick as stainless steel can be drilled with a hand drill. I would have finished yesterday, but my bit gave up on the last two to be done. I’ll get those taken care of today and hope the new parts arrive today as well.

Maria helped get the fuselage on the stands and also helped complete some of the smaller tasks like attaching nut plates in the baggage area. I had neglected to do these when I was doing the baggage compartment out of what I can only assume was me really wanting to move onto something else.

One highlight of putting the fuselage on rolling stands was moving it out into the parking lot to sweep the garage out. I missed getting a picture, but it was funny to just see a plane sitting in a condominium parking lot.

The last issue that I’m trying to figure a solution for is around the boot cowl strips that go around the firewall. You can see it in the last two pictures below. I’m not sure why this happened or how to fix it, so if anyone has an idea or did something already, please let me know.

(11 h)

The beginning of an end

By Ryan

On March 20, 2016

In S-20

This past week was spring break so I didn’t have to go to any class. We had decided back in January to go somewhere and with some good luck on our side we made it to Paris (the French one). We left Chicago on Sunday and returned to Chicago on Thursday. It was a short trip, but we think it was the best amount of time. Not too long to get bored of the city and not too short to not see the few big items on the Paris checklist. It was a lot of fun and we ate a lot of good food and more than the average persons baked good consumption. It did mean that there wasn’t a lot of time left over the break to work on the airplane, but we did manage to get a few things taken care of.

First, I worked on wrapping up the boot cowl. I feel like I have said that for 4 1/2 months now, but it truly is getting closer. Between yesterday and today, I got the cowl strips drilled out. This was a chore in itself and I never did it the same way twice. You have 3 small strips and 3 wider strips to place and transfer drill so you get a lot of time to screw up and try different ways. My boot cowl will have several 5/32″ rivets in it due to holes becoming over sized. If you recall my last posting, we had decided to not place the strips in our initial drilling of the boot cowl skins from the firewall support angle tabs. So what that means is that I had nice #30 holes and then I came back around and transfer drilled through them into the cowl strip. At first I was drilling through the boot cowl skin into the strip. This is problematic because the tab on the firewall support angle is probably not going to stay put and you end up enlarging those holes. That’s bad because then a rivet or cleco won’t keep those pieces together. It took a while for me to get everything lined up, but I did get the majority of the first strip drilled out to #30 with about 10 5/32″ holes to cover up mistakes. As a note, I spent a lot of time realigning the strip and support angle to the boot cowl skin so I didn’t make a lot of holes. Some better sheet metal workers might know some tricks, but I don’t and I went very slowly.

The next piece was the larger cowl strip. This is the piece that the cowling of the plane will eventually attach to. This piece seemed easier probably because I had spent 2.5 hours on the smaller pieces the day before. Another part that made it easier was that is was on the inside of the firewall support angles so it just needed to be pushed flush against the support angle and it was set. You should take note that everything is straight or use a lot of tape. This strip seemed to be steel (Thought of that after I sat there drilling into it with a standard bit) and it didn’t want to conform. We had a nice chat together and it finally agreed to behave. The other part is that I was now transfer drilling through 3 sheets of metal, so everything would sort of line up when I put the drill bit through the hole. I’m positive my holes are not perfect #30 sizes, but the clecos hold and everything seems sturdy. I’ve got it on my list of things to talk with Ed about the next time I call RANS. This drilling took half of what the smaller spacer strips did.

One other thing to bring up that I may not have mentioned is that a transfer drilled all the hole in the top skins from the firewall support angles and then I proceeded working with the small strips and then the larger cowl strips. This probably contributed to the holes being enlarged. I’m not sure an easier or better way to do this, so I will ask the all knowing this week, after I have completed the task and can only kick myself 🙂

Maria helped out this weekend as well and she doesn’t like me to watch over and scrutinize her work, so we found some tasks that needed to be done that were relatively quick to do and she had something to show for it afterwards. If you are wanting to involve the family, spouse, or friends in the building process, deburring and sanding is not the best thing to make them do the whole time. Although it cuts down on the time I have to do that stuff, Maria is no fan of deburring sheet metal for two hours. I’m not either which is why I like other people to do it 🙂

Maria put together and riveted the pedal assemblies together today and installed the rudder cable pulleys and cables in the tail yesterday. We’re getting a lot of things checked off the pre-covering checklist. We did have to sit and stare at the pedals before riveting to decide on when to paint them. In a perfect world you probably would paint each piece on the back and then rivet everything together and paint the front. But since you will probably never see the backside of my rudder pedals, we decided that as long as it looks decent back there, we won’t worry about it at all.

A fellow local S-20 builder found some neat two-part spray can paint from Eastwood. He tried it on a few parts and it looks great. They have a rat-rod black which looks really good and I think I’ll be using that for quite a few of the small things on the airplane.

And for my last complaint, my large boot cowl strips don’t seem to be aligned the best. They all meet at a good point and appear to be flat against the firewall, but they still are slightly tweaked. Cosmetic things on this airplane are very frustrating for me

(6 h)

Boot Cowl Blitz

By Ryan

On March 5, 2016

In S-20

Today was a very successful day. I had two friends (Rich and Bob) come down to assist in the building process and we got a ton done on the boot cowl.

First step of the day was to clean up the sides and transfer drill the holes from the stiffeners to the sides of the boot cowl. After that we riveted them to the boot cowl sides (Pro tip: Do not rivet the top stiffener on each side. You will need to transfer drill through the skin into the top side boot cowl skin. Luckily, aluminum rivets are easily drilled out.).

After that, we fitted up the instrument panel frame to being fitting the top boot cowl skins. We had to remove some of the frame to clear some welds, but nothing major. One thing we couldn’t figure out is how to attach the instrument panel to the panel frame without riveting the panel frame to the fuselage. The panel frame has a mounting hole that corresponds to a tab on the fuselage, but the panel does not. So we just rolled with the panel frame and did a lot of checking and measuring to make sure we were staying flush with the tabs on the firewall. In the end, this seemed to work out, but I guess we won’t really know until the panel goes in.

The top sides sit right against the tube that connects the firewall and the top of the fuselage. I think there will be a rubber grommet there, but there isn’t much space. I’m going to look into that because I know it needs something there and I don’t know if I have enough space.

When we first started putting on the top sides it didn’t seem like they would reach down to the stiffener location on the side skin. After transfer drilling holes starting from the middle at the top and moving outboard, everything did fall into place. We spent a lot of time looking it over and I would suggest the same to others getting to this part of the build.

Another thing that we did was to transfer drill the top skins from the firewall tabs without the spacer strips in between the tabs and top skins. We thought that this was making it too complex and we will do that on the next work day.

After we finished, we had drilled out all the holes for the boot cowl. The next items are to fit up the spacer strips, fit up the instrument panel visor, and debur. A lot of deburring.

Big thanks to Rich and Bob for the help. We got a ton of stuff done that would have taken me weeks probably at my current pace. Also, it was a lot easier to have help when fussing with the boot cowl. I wouldn’t have wanted to do it by myself.

Next potential build time is over spring break which will be in two weeks. Midterms are this week which are stressing me out, but I’m not the first. I always have trouble breaking these engineering problems down. I think I just need more practice!

(18 h)