The Dream is Over - There will be no Pie in the Sky

Realizing we have been finding less and less time for the project, we come to the conclusion this project was never going to get done.  We then made the hard decision to discontinue work on the project.

The last few picture in the blog will not be us flying the completed plane, but rather pictures of the plane being loaded up so some other fellow can take a run at seeing our project completed.

Final Assembly Of The Fuselage Has Begun

We finally started finally assembly on the front section of the of the fuselage.  We completed the pre-assembly on Saturday, and got a little riveting time in on Monday.  There is still quite a bit of work left to go, but this work usually more enjoyable when done in short stretches.

Finished Pre-Assembly on March 8

First bit of riveting completed on March 10

Still Chipping Away

So we did end up taking quite a few weeks off again over the Christmas period.  We did manage to get a few work sessions in in January, and had a pretty good run again today.  We are currently in the final stages of preparing the front of the fuselage for final assemble.  We riveted a few small pieces in place today, drilled a few holes, torqued a few nuts, etc... We should be in for a pretty intense riveting and assembly session our next time out.

This is one of the spots we spent quite a bit of time on today

Scott priming the over lap section of the skin

More progress

Well today we finished all the prep work on the longerons.  Way back we talked about bending and shaping the longerons but today we focused on machine countersinking and then prepping and priming them.  For those who haven't been reading our blog since we started this project all those years ago, machine countersinking is done to allow the rivets to be flush with the skin of the plane.  Dimpling is basically doing the same thing except that, instead of removing material to make room for the head of the rivet, you just bend the material.  You machine countersink when the material is too thick to bend and you dimple when the material is too thin to machine countersink.

In any case, we're ready to begin final assembly on the fuselage.  It will be nice to see some parts going in their final location.

Back to work (again)

Okay so I guess the post in April should've been called 'temporarily back to work until summer projects can start and take up all the free time'.  But we're back in the shop now and have finished disassembling the fuselage so that we can prep all the parts for final assembly.  Progress has been pretty quick so far.  We've prepped (deburred, dimpled/countersunk, and primed) all the parts from the centre fuselage forward.

September 25th

What greeted us when we started the night of work.

Time to start disassembling.

Scott checking out the night's progress

September 28th

Getting some pieces our of our way so we have more room to work.

Disassembly is complete.

Finally back to work

After a few long breaks, and pretty busy winter for both Scott and myself, we have managed to get in a few sessions of working on the plane.  I didn't have a camera handy for the first couple of days back in the shop, but I will include every picture I have in this post.

January 26, 2013

February 18, 2013

April 27, 2013

The current state of the fuselage

Well...

So you know how my post way back in November said that it's been far too long without a post.  Well, it's been far too long without a post again.  But we have been working on the plane.  We completed all the steps for the lower fuselage up to the stage where we disassemble everything so we can prep and prime.  We started the long process of disassembly this past weekend.  I expect that it will be a few long weeks of prepping and priming parts.  After that we can start the assembly.

January 12, 2013

The foot pedals pre-assembly

The foot pedals post-assembly

Darren match drilling

Where we finished for the day

Where we finished for the day from another angle

January  19, 2013

The disassembling has begun

Yes it does look like we are going backwards