Fuselage Construction
FLASH
!! Plans and my new book - The Making of Daisy Mae are now available
for purchase. Click
here for
a quick look-see. I am sure you will like it.
(click picture for larger view)
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Plans & Book |
The
centerline is all important. I stretched a bright yellow cord down
the middle of my work table and then inked in a centerline. As I
cut each diagonal I also mark the center of those as I cut them.
That way centers are on centers.
Another point to make is to figure out where your fuselage is most apt to be square in all planes, and to start in the widest area. That way you are working with a square box. In my case there was no square box, so I found the widest part and installed my horizontal pieces, but didn't glue them. At that point I decided to go ahead and glue in the firewall cross members and work back toward the tail. Cross members can be a bitch but mine weren't. Mainly because I had drawn my own plans on Model CAD. So I decided to get into that program, look at my top view, then dimension every piece as well as get the precise angle to cut each piece. Worked out pretty good. I have a bad splice in my upper left longeron that will need to be adjusted. The glue joint on the splice is good but the splice ended up at an angle instead of flat. As a result when laying that side, upside down on the table, there is a slight gap in that area. It will be an easy fix. In addition, after getting a few
cross members glued in solid, I decided to begin forming the aft end, by
gently pulling in each side and clamping them closer & closer together.
Possibly they will begin a natural curvature so that when I get to the
point of clamping them together it won't be too stressful on the
entire frame.
Photo #2 - You may notice a quick, easy, cheap way to get stuff square without a lot of special jigs and hassle as depicted in this picture. Click on it for a large view. Grab some scrap wood and hot stuff it to the horizontal piece at about a 45 degree angle. No need to be precise yet. Then lay your carpenters square in there and square things up. The un-glued end of your 45 degree brace can now be clamped to the vertical piece, which will hold it in the proper place for gluing. Before any glue is applied I rechecked all angles and joints for the proper fit. In addition I laid a level on everything. Not impossible but pretty darned hard not to get a square fuselage. Photo #3 - This is my first sit in the cockpit. It is roomy. Fuselage could have been about 3-4 inches narrower (24 instead of 28") but the basic vertical frame is about right. Photo #4 -Initially I made formers from 1/4 ply to use as templates. I then calculated how many stringers I needed to keep the fabric in place so we didn't have that starved horse look. In this case it was 9, spaced about 3 1/2 inches apart at the cockpit. Used Model CAD to print out fomers and place hatch marks on the cockpit former and the tail post former. Then used the hacker way to line up the other stringer slots in the other formers. By using 3/16 sq. stringer templates, I could easily bend and adjust them till they looked straight. Then simply made marks on the other formers, where the stringers went across them. They came out pretty close as you can see. After I was satisfied with the slot location for the stringers on each former, I then cut out the slots to accept 3/16 x 3/4 spruce. After minor slot adjustments I laid in the 3/16x3/4 stringers. All were initially cut oversize in length. None of this was glued as all of this will have to come off because the formers were only meant as templates for the real deal. Photo #5 - This is the final version of my left Rudder pedal. Used Cessna 150 brake cylinder with reservoir and parking brake lever which I may or may not use. Next photo shows the back side w/o aircraft bolts. Bottom
Row
Photo #2 & 3 -Got to have a headrest because it looks cocky. First I cut it out of Blue Foam, sanded it to shape, epoxy in whatever formers or fittings I want, cover it with 12 oz. fiberglass and epoxy, fill and sand, then melt out the foam with gasoline (very messy). I used my wooden base cut out template as an attachment plate to attach the whole deal to the fuselage. The actual head rest was hinged to the ply bracket shown. Photo
#4 - Old chubby dude just had to check it out.
Looks about right. All done and mounted. Padded door on the
front and will use the space for gloves, maps or a jug of booze.
Held in place with Velcrow (TM).
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