Primed and painted the Wing Stands

I managed to get the wing stands scuffed, re-cleaned, primed and painted. A long time ago, way back when I began this project, I had completed Van's Tool box kit after receiving my tools from Cleaveland Tools to acclamate myself to them in preparation for the larger task ahead. When the toolbox was completed I purcchased some spray paint to match the colors that had grabbed my attention at the time - a bright blue and an aircraft gray. I had planned to use them on the toolbox, but I never did. So it has remained primed with Napa 7220 gray primer ever since.

Fast forward to today. I knew that I needed to properly preserve the steel wing stands by priming them and painting them once they were ready, and that day finally came. I used a wire bristle brush in my electric drill to rough up the surfaces of all four stands, and then re-cleaned them with acetone. I also used a tapered grinding bit that fits in my drill to debur each of the mounting holes in the bases. I then primed all four stands them with about 1.5 cans of Napa 7220.

Then finally, holding true to my nature to act, think, speak, and do things differently than most others, I did not paint them all with just one solid pretty color. Instead, I remembered that I still had the blue and gray paint on the shelf, and decided to have some fun. I decided to emulate the top and botton color scheme as seen on the photo at the top of my blog. I used the aircraft gray paint on the bottom of each stand, and the blue paint on the top. I also chose not to make any clean, crip lines that separate the two colors. Since one of my absolute passions in life is WW II aircraft, I wanted to try my hand at using paint from spray can to create the airbrushed non-linear blended look of the two colors, similar to the way that WWII aircraft were painted as part of their camoflage schemes. Here are some shots of the results:

I have to say I like the results. Others will probably look at this and have other opinions, and I really don't care. Just one of the pleasures of living in a free country where I can choose to use whatever colors I want to build my own airplane! An interesting thing about this ceramic blue hight temp engine block paint that used. It seems to have a multi-color characteristic to it. It turns a light turqois in the sunlight, and is a much darker blue tone in the shade. Here is another shot of all of them side by side. Just imagine this is the paint line of my fuselage :)

With the help of my son I also repositioned the hanging bracket for my HS so that it would be a little bit easier than where I had it before, but the refrigerator has proved to make it just as difficult to hang, so no matter what I try this task is still a bit difficult, but do-able.

Now my work table is free again, and I can start match drilling ribs to the wing spars by clamping one spar to the table and the other one to the work benches. Next steps are also to mark the final locations for both sets of wing stands, rent the rotary hammer drill, drill the 16 mounting holes in the concrete floor, and then finish installing the remaining hardware for the angle cross members that will actually support each wing spar at a good working height. I am still concerned about the un-evenness of my concrete floor, but since the angle supports will be adjustable for level, regardless of the less level attitude of the wing stands due to the unneven floor, I am not terribly concerned about it. as long as the centerlines of each stand are relatively close aligned with each other, I can adjust the angle supports for leveling the spars with no problem.

One thing that I still have to resolve is that I need to ensure that there is enough room in front of the work benches so that I can use them to build the flaps and ailerons that also come with the wing kit. The only problem is that my concrete floor has a relief line between two separate slabs of poured concrete, and in order to preserve the spacing in front of the work benches and still be able to get both cars in the garage I will need to position the wing stands in such a way that the mounting brackets will straddle both slabs of concrete. Since the slabs are at least 20 years old, I think this will be OK, but it might make lining up the stands on both ends a bit of challenge.

I will need to snap some chalk lines once I have made my final decisions as to the pacement of the stands, and then I get to try my hand at a rotary hammer drill for the first time. Lucky me!

Drilling holes in Wing Stand Supports

Last night I finally managed to finish drilling all the mounting holes in the base of the wing stands. It all starts with the measurements -  1/2 inch round bolt holes for each 3/8 inch wedge bolt and washer that will be placed in the concrete, spaced at approximately 14 inch centers, 2 inches in from the outer edge of each angle, with centers at 7/8 inches from the sides as shown by the sharpee marks:

Next comes a pilot hole using a 1/4 inch titanium coated drill bit with a pilot bit on the end for drilling in metal: (sorry for the blurry pic)

And next are the 1/4 inch pilot holes. I used some boe-lube to lubricate the bit ocassionally:

The process of drilling all these holes took me a while. It seemed that in some cases the bits would dull after the first use and would not cut as well for subsequent holes, and other times....well, lets just say I found a way to break "titanium" with relative ease a few times! Notice the slight bend in one of the bits in the following pic. This was a 7/32 bit - slightly smaller than the 1/4 inch bit, but apparently a whole lot less rigid. I found that there is a technique involved where as the drill but starts to get close to exiting out the other side, you need to ease off the pressure being applied on the bit. That seemed to help some.

It seems that when the bit starts to penetrate the far side of the metal, it tends to grab quite hard - probably due to my 3/8 inch electric drill not having enough RPM to do this correctly - and the keyless chuck that kept coming loose every so often did not help much either. Fortunately the 1/2 inch drill bit never faltered on me, so those holes all went fairly well:

And finally, I am going to use Red Head 2 1/4 inch x 3/8 inch concrete anchors to secure each wing stand to the concrete. My plan is to use a rotary hammer drill with a 3/8 inch carbide bit, place and draw the outline of the angles and the mounting holes with a sharpee, and got to town with the hammer drill. These anchors require a minimum depth of 1 1/2 inches, and the instructions say to drill  another 1/4 inch deeper - so 1 3/4 inches deep is all that is needed. After you account for the 1/4 inch depth of the angle and the washer and nut, it leaves about 1/8 of an inch to torque down the nut to secure the stands to the anchors.

No, this is not going to be the final resting place of this wing stand, right over one of many cracks in my floor! I just took this to show the alignment of the holes in the flanges after they are drilled to size. I did trial fit one of the 3/8 inch anchors into the 1/2 inch hole, and I have to agree with Aaron that having a bit of wiggle room for the bolt is a good idea. The washer and nut feels like it will securely attach the stand to the floor, and I am not concerned about the over-sized mounting holes for the bolts I am using. These suckers are extremely heavy, so positioning and marking the locations for the stands on the floor will be a 2 person job. The last thing I want is for one of these things toppling over on me - that would be a very bad day in the airplane shop indeed.

One more step done......

Wing Stands Work Cont'd

Over this weekend I finally got to do some more work on the wing stands. They are still not to the point where I am ready to clamp the wing spars on them, but as with so mnay other things about this project - you just have to keep doing all the little things that need to be done, and one day you will have a completed airplane. Just ask Ron Duren, who just announced after a long, extremely focused work ethic on his RV-7 project, recently announced that he is ready for the big move from the garage to the hangar at the airport. Usually once that is done it is not too much longer afterward that ingeine first starts and first flights are performed.

First pic is of the bottom of the wing stands. Note how the welds have been ground down so they are flush with the bottom of the flanges. Since one of the two welds performed on each angle bracket was on the bottom, these welds have to be ground down so that the stand will sit level on the concrete floor of the garage.

Aaron had already done a great job grinding down 3 of the four stands while they were still at his house before I loaded them up in the car for the ride home several weeks ago. The last one still needed to be done as shown in the pic below:

In addition to grinding down the bottom welds, Aaron had told me to cut wedges in the flanges of the angles to avoid catching your foot on them. Since his Dad's plasma cutter was not cooperating with the generator on the day they were welded to the posts, we resolved to use a reciprocating saw with a metal cutting blade to do the job. This, in addition to the grinder and an abrasive 3M wheel to clean the weld joint and remove corrosion, were the tools utilized this weekend as shown below:

The abrasive wheel is chucked in the drill. The metal blade in the recip saw really worked well to trim the flanges. It was a little bit of a trick to figure out how to hold the saw blade to trim only one flange at a time. Even more amazing was how this saw blade basically cuts through 1/4 inch thick steel with relative ease. I have used the recip saw for a variety of projects over the years, and I sort of have a love/hate relationship with the thing. In some instances it has almost broken my arm, and in other instances it works just fine with no problems whatsoever. Luckily the latter was the result on this particular project.

Here is a shot of the finished cuts from the saw. Basically I am just cutting a 45 degree angle or so on each vertical flange of each angle. Not shown yet is that I then took the grinder and removed all the sharp cut edges on each cut. The hope is that I will not catch my foot or cut myself on these while I work around the wing. 

I then marked the positions for the mounting holes on the bottom of each flange, and per information from Aaron as to how he did this, I purchased a set of titanium bits with a pilot tip (DEwalt)  that are 2 inches in from the edges of each angle, centered at 7/8 inches from the edge. Keep in mind that the angles are 2x2 inches wide, and 18 inches long. So you might think that the holes need to be centered at 1 inch centers. However, you alos ahve to keep in mind that they are 1/4 inch thick, and that 2x2 inch measurement is from the outside edge of each angle, so it does not account for the 1/4 inch thickness of each flange. So you need to measure the center point for the mounting bolt hole based on the inside distance of the angle, or 1 and 3/4 inches. This puts the centers at 7/8 inches from the outer edge. I then drilled a pilot hole with the 1/4 inch drill bit and was amazed again at how well the bit drilled through the still flange. I used some boe lube wax to help lubricate the bit. I then followed up with a 1/2 inch bit. Even though the anchor bolts I am using are only 3/8 inch bolts, Aaron suggested that I drill 1/2 inch wide bolt holes in the angles to allow some wiggle room in case the anchors are misaligned slightly from perfect 14 inch centers, which is highly likely.

I got the mounting holes drilled in 2 of the four wing stands, so I have eight more holes to drill in the two remaining stands (4 per stand), and then comes the priming and painting. Guess I also forgot to mention that I cleaned them up with acetone to remove this really dirty coating on the posts that must be from some sort of packing oil or something. That seemed to do a pretty good job of removing the residue. Looks like we get some good warm weather here for a change this week so I expect to complete the priming and painting, and perhaps even get them mounted to the floor by next weekend.

So no glaring posts about completing major airplane parts this week, but I am getting the small steps done to blast these wings out as quickly as possible. One step at a time.......

Wing spars relocated back on the work bench

As part of my ongoing major re-organization effort of the garage, I managed to clear off enough space from the work benches to allow me to move the spars from the shelf on the wall to the benches. I had not seen them for a while, and it felt good to get them down from "storage" so I can start match drilling ribs and skins and such.

The only problem I encountered whne attempting to move them from the shelf to the bench was that all of the parts that were stored on the shelf had been buried by almost 1 inch of shingle remnant when the jerks put my new roof on the house. THey did a great job cleaning up around the perimeter of the house but nobody even mentioned anything about checking and cleaning up my garage. This really pissed me off, but at the same time I realized that this was mostly my fault for leaving them "in harms way" adn not covering them with a tarp or something. I guess I just did not expect to ahve that much crap fall down into the garage.

IN any event, it looks like I was able to vacuum up most of the stuff, but this kind of thing always makes me nervous when I start thinking about all the little pieces tht may still be buried underneath the metal that will not show their ugly face until the vibration from the finished plane finally jars them loose, adn then who know what crevace they may find to deposit themselves into that end up affecting a critical flight control or something.

Here is the first of several pics - lovely shingle crap and sawdust all over my left elevator, and most certainly inside the bay where the electric servo and linkage  goes - the one place that I really don't want to have any of this crap in my airplane, where it can be fatal if something goes wrong.

Edit - and a happy new year to me!! Turns out that blogspot has had problems with uploading images apparently since clear back on January 4. Smells like a virus or even better a ploy to push users away from IE and onto Google chrome or Firefox browsers. Having recently had problems at work with Firefox's latest release, I am now leary of downloading anyone's browser. That said, it does seem that Firefox v 17.0.1 does not have the problem that IE does (do NOT under any circumstances install Firefox v 18.0 - very bad!).

Anyway, to continue - here is the pics of my roof debris covered airplane parts, starting with the left elevator:

Next is the rear spar:

And on a happier note, here are the main wing spars back on the bench. Unfortunately, my HS is still on the table in front of the bench, and I need to finish up some touch up work on the HS so I can hang it back up on the wall to free up the table so I can start attaching ribs - it just never ends.

Still dealing with another deep freeze that has put the stops on anything in the garage. Now working on the cleanup of the benches in the basement - getting tired of living in the junk heap of a house. Almost ready to break out the two fire pits that I own and start some serious burning!

And finally, this is better late than never I guess. A couple of weeks ago I attended a hangar party up at KBJC for a gathering of RV folks across the state. Compliments to Bob Market, who owns this awesome hangar which will soon house Ron Duren's RV-7. I met several people that I had never met before, and made some new friends along the way. Here is a list of things that happened up there:

1. Got a close up view of Sean Thomas' Metal Wing stands. I will post some additional pics of that in another post, but here is a teaser pic for now. Sean is doing a great job.

2. Finally got to see Sean B, who had some very bad luck last summer after his house, and nearly completed RV7 were lost in a large fire near Colorado Springs. It was really great to see him and to find out that he is actually back to building another 7 again and doing his best to put the fire behind him. Kudos to you Sean. I admire your intestinal fortitude! KPR my friend.
3. I got to meet Jim Gray, owner and builder of the 2010 grand champion homebuilt award at Oshkosh for his beautifully finished RV-8, which was finished in the colors of the Jolly Roger Squadron seen in so many movies, including Top Gun and GI Jane. I took a ton of pics and got to pick Jim's brain for some building tips for such things as the forward baggage door, etc.

4. As if that was not enough, I then got a chance to talk with Bob Markert, who is now working on his fuselage. Get ready for alot of green - I just love the color of the primer he is using:

Note the mockup of the instrument panel - alot of Garmin goodies going in this one. He also has a rear seat throttle that I am also considering putting in the back as a safety feature more than anything else. I am NOT going to put the rear rudder pedals in mine - too many stories from other folks about ineffective control and uncomfortable foot position for the rear seat occupant. here is the forward throttle quadrant  - very similar to what I am going to do.

And the rear throttle:

And here is shot of an improvement over the stock landing gear provided by Vans - Grove lnding gear struts are made from one piece leaf spring steel (I think), and they are designed to carry the hydraulic brake fluid inside the actual strut instead of from a separate brake line that is typically strapped to the the landing gear strut. These also serve to eliminate the need to make fairings for the landing gear legs since they already come aerodynamically shaped.

And finally a shot of one of the auxiliary fuel tanks that fit at the tip of each wing. These are from SafeAir and are very expensive (about 1500.00 for the pair), and they give you about an hour of extra fuel. I plan on getting the bungle kit which is simply the fuel line fitting that is added to the main fuel tank which connects to the fuel line coming from the aux tank shown below. I will simply cap this off for potential future use shold I decide to add the aux tanks at a later time. Part of the tank fits inside the wing tip (bottom of pic), and the rest of it (long tube) fits inside the lightening holes of the outer wing ribs. It was very cool to see these up close.

Then Bob showed me a custom windscreen that he ordered from the same company that makes the canopies for Vans. The stock canopy comes molded as one full unit that must be cut and trimmed to create the wind screen and the separate bubble canopy. I had no idea that you could order just the wind screen by itself. I learn something every day.

So it was one hangar, good friends, good food, good conversation, and a mind blowing awesome experience to see flying RVs and RVs under construction all in the same place. It certainly had an airplane factory feel to it. Now I just need to get back to pounding some rivets! All for now.