Polishing Stories, June 24th, 2001
I have to wait for delivery of the 5/32 dimpling dies, so I started polishing the aft fuse sidewalls. One sidewall took me about 5 hours. This is a really sh** work.
This is what it should look like. I'm afraid to think of all the wing surface waiting for me. If you want to have a real mirror-like surface, then all the 'grain' structure of the sheet metal has to be polished out. My first Idea was to use a Scotchbrite-Pad, mount it at the sander and then do the first rough work. After this process the surface gets a satin-like finish (patch at the foreground).
This was NOT A GOOD IDEA! It took me hours to polish this back to mirror-finish. What I have learned from this is:
Don't use Scotch-Brite to remove these very faint scratches. Now I leave hair-fine scratches untouched.
For the polishing job I purchased a new 'orbital' polishing machine.
However this was also a bad deal. The machine is way too big for the initial polishing. Also there is no 'force' behind. With this machine I would have to work forever. The red machine at the above pic does a much better job. Maybe I can use this machine when the flyer is finished and needs a facelift from time to time.
This is the famous 'Nuvite' stuff. I got the 'F7' (intermediate) and the 'S' (final) stuff. This selection was not so good. The 'F7' is sufficient for the final polish. It takes ~very~ long with the F7 to remove even the faintest imperfection. A better choice would be to buy the F7 for the finish and a more coarse one for the preparatory work.
The tube in the foreground is a chrome polish from the auto parts store. It's even as good as the Nuvite, however I can get it only in such small sizes.
Aileron Counterbalance, June 19th, 2001
The ailerons are balanced by lead counterweights.
This is the mould I'll pour the liquid lead in (and hopefully the particleboard will not burn down by this). The rectangular lead piece will be cut diagonally for the left and right counterweights.
This is the material I'll use for the counterweights (used tyrebalancing weights).
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Round Corners, June 13th, 2001
These are the corner plates which attach the instrument panel to the fuselage sides. Deviating from the plans I rounded all edges.
Instead of the throttle location at the left corner plate I installed headphone sockes at each side. The throttle goes where it has to be: below the center of the instrument panel.
Actually I round/radius ~any~ 90deg edge. The story behind:
One of my first postings at the Sonex mailing list was the question if 'Sonex' is a 'he' or a 'she'. The answer was that airplanes are regarded as 'ships' and ships always are of female gender. So it's a lady, it has to have round corners ;)))
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What is 'dumb'?, June 12th, 2001
Dumb is when Jack Lockamy puts a note on his webpage like: be careful with the rear spars, there's a pitfall
...and when I file this note into my 'special know how' folder
...and then step exactly into this pitfall (say mount the LH attach plate on the right spar and vice versa)
this pic shows how to do it right (watch the different lengths of the attach plates)
And what is Luck?
Luck is when the pilot holes are so precise that LH and RH attach plates are interchangeable (even tho that they are not identical in shape) Hallelujyh...
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Big Problem, June 9th, 2001
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