November 13, 2005
Yet further proof that I'm building this plane all by myself....
Ellen snapped this picture of me reading Aeroelectric Connection. The furred brow is a sure sign of superior intelect and intense concentration. Yeah, right....Ellen tells me that a second or two after snapping this picture, the book flopped over and fell to the floor. Apparently, I was sound asleep. No offense, Bob.
Bright and early...Yesterday, I drilled the entire VS (there's really nothing to it). Today, I started out by cleaning everything with MetalPrep and laying it out in the sun to dry.
Here's my setup for shooting Akzo (yes, I'm back to that...old habits, and all). I have these mixing cups from Aircraft Spruce, little containers for holding the 2 parts of the primer, the standard crappy Harbor Freight touch-up gun (which ain't so crappy for this appication), and a couple of ladles from the avitaion department of Bed, Bath & Beyond. This is ridiculously easy and mess free. I use the drill mounted cyclo-stirrer thingy to stir up the green stuff in the metal container to get all the solids redissolved. The clear stuff needs no mixing as far as I can tell. Then I simply ladle equal amounts of green stuff and clear stuff into the mixing cup (the ladles are even labelled "green stuff" and "clear stuff", just so I won't cross contaminate the containers). You don't have to measure any finer than "ladlefull". Then I just clean the ladles off with a bit of acetone, mix up the junk in the mixing cup with a popsicle stick and let it sit for 30 minutes. When it's time to put it in the gun, I just squeeze the sides of the mixing cup to make a little pouring lip, and dump it in. Piece of cake.
In the meantime, I've got 30 minute to kill. I started edge finishing and deburing the VS skin.
Then I used my handy-dandy DRDT-2 to dimple the skin. I LOVE THIS TOOL.
This was one of the best tool purchases I made. HIGHLY recommened.
One of my "Don't put a rivet here, knuckhead" clecoes.
Idiot clecoes in action. Here, everything's all nice and primed and I'm getting ready to rivet the rear spar.
One last look before I start bending...er....driving rivets.