Devin W.C. Ryan

Building 4 Star 60 Day 5: Elevators and Fuselage Formers

Today I started working with working on connecting the two elevators with with wire.  This involved first marking the centre of the edge and then using the plans to line up where the wire needed to be inserted and mark it.  Then drilled a whole 1/8th in diameter an inch into the elevator.  Then grooved out a line using the drill bit from the whole we made to the inside edge about an eighth of an inch deep and had to groove it down deeper still to make sure the wire is flush and not sticking up past the edge of the elevator.  This was repeated on the other elevator as well.  Will need to sand the metal piece before gluing into place to securely connect the two elevators.

Elevators
Elevators

Once that was done for the night I sanded the edges of the right side of the plane as well as the edges of formers F1-F6.  After laying the right side of the plane down on the table, inside up, we placed the formers into their proper locations to ensure they fit and used solid 90 degree objects as weights to ensure they are vertical.  The firewall was a bit to big and required some light sanding to make it fit.  This is after ensuring their was no excess glue from where we glued the fuselage doubler.

The next step was to glue the formers into place.  For this we had to mix yet a different kind of glue.  I still don’t have this part memorized.  It takes a long time to set making it great for this as creates a stronger bond but also means to ensure we don’t warp/twist the fuselage we can only do one side at a time.  Then you let it dry before continuing on.  Some people do multiple sides at once and hold it together with elastic bands but I’d rather just take the extra time.

Once glued into place we used clamps to keep the formers in place and vertical against the 90 degree objects.   We then rigged it up to place weights on top to ensure the glued areas are firmly pressed together.

Formers glued to right side of fuselage
Formers glued to right side of fuselage

This concluded another building session and planning to get in another tomorrow!

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