Flanging Hole Die

Are we sick of talking about flanged lightening holes yet? Yup. But I saw a cool idea on Bruce King's photo gallery, I think for the Hummelbird not the BK Flier. He had a picture of a croquet ball and it seems so simple! Use the croquet ball for nearly any size hole smaller than the ball, and voila! A flanged hole! Me so dumb.

Cutting More Ribs

I actually like cutting sheet metal. It isn't always easy and the pieces can be very hazardous to one's body (I wear tough gloves) if one isn't careful. I learned about sharp edges when I was young, cutting fallen tree limbs after a northeast hurricane back in the 80s. The tree saw went neatly into my thumb and now I am smarter. Funny how that works?

The pictures show the .020 aluminum sheet on the living room floor. The living room is about 30 degrees cooler than the garage, which is nearly 120 degrees. I keep a fan in there but 120 degrees blowing around may as well be 120 degrees not blowing around. I just make sure I keep some paper on the floor so that my bare feet don't find any aluminum slivers later!

I have all the rib blanks cut and now I just have to clean them up and give them the tabs. The tabs will then be the surface that the wing skins will be riveted to. More cutting! Woo hoo!

Bad Flanges

I tried out the new hole flanging tool from Aircraft Spruce, on a piece of scrap aluminum. I wasn't terribly impressed by the results. The metal tends to warp considerably and the flange itself has this wavy edge that just doesn't look right. I'm sure it would be acceptable but for the time it took to do the flange this way, the results are just not very positive. So I don't recommend doing your hole flanges with this kind of tool. I am sure someone could argue the point but I don't like it at all.

I don't consider this a failure, just part of the learning process that will go into my future projects! I went back to my home made dies and the test piece was nearly flawless! The die is made of hardwood so I have no idea how long it will last but the .020 aluminum is nice and soft so I can't imagine it really beating up the die, at least not in the short term. The added benefit is that the die cost me less than $5! It's hard to argue with that price! I may find some use for the tool I bought, but at this point I don't know where it will be used.

The Cardboard Instruments: Redux

Crap.
The 1 1/2 inch instruments are made by VDO. I like them a lot and they would fit VERY nicely on the panel but... they are auto instruments. No, that's not the problem, the VW engine is a converted auto engine. The problem is that they just aren't a standard.

The standard, or a particular standard, is 2 1/16 inch instruments. They are made by lots of companies. This is an issue because if the 1 1/2 inch instrument(s) fail, it could be hard to find replacements. So I am moving up to bigger 2 1/16 inch instruments. More weight, more biggah.

This means making a bigger panel, or more likely, putting two instruments on the side pillars of the panel. That is a tight spot anyway as the mixture, throttle, and carb heat will be on or near the left pillar. The hourmeter will be on the right, grouped with the master switch and panel power and lights.

Ha ha ha, oh man, where does the copilot sit?

Of course the option is to go MFD. One expensive screen in the middle of the panel. It would have all the bells and whistles AND be solid state. Yes, and when it dies so do all of my electronic senses too.

Did I mention a transponder and radio? No? How about GPS? Okay, I'll take that two foot wing extension and a turbocharger to go. And a diet Coke, because somebody needs to lose weight.