Making Due with What You Have - The Continuation

Its been a crazy week at work, and since I am the newsletter editor for my chapter I have to spend a few evenings creating the monthly newsletter at the beginning of the 3rd week of each month. So I haven't been able to update the blog until now.

So here's the story I meant to tell in the last post. Every once in a while - and this has happened to me several times since I started the project - an opportunity arises where the materials and tools and techniques that are used to build an airplane come in handy for some unexpected purpose. One of the first things you experience when you start a project such as this, is that although you are working with metal, you sure end up spending a lot of time working with wood. All the fixtures and jigs and work benches and tables and clamping setups that you have to make out of wood in order to build a metal airplane is remarkable.

So as a result you develop a pretty good set of skills working with wood. On this particular occasion, I had a plastic tree stand for our Christmas tree finally give out last year, and I had intended on ordering a new one for this year as the holiday season started ramping up. The base was starting to crack where the legs attach to it, and it was no longer able to support the weight of the tree.

As I searched online for a replacement, I found out that there are a million different replacement stands out there, but none of them were to my liking.I was out in the garage one day staring at the fuel tank, and I turned and looked at an orange home depot bucket with a bunch of wood scraps in it that has been sitting around for years now. All of the wood in this bucket was remnant wood from the rib forms that I had cut from 2x10 boards to make the forming blocks for my subskin fabrication for the leading edge. Some of them are shown below:

The more I stared at these pieces of wood, the more I realized that I might just be able to use them to make a brand new stand for the Christmas tree. They were long enough to match to length of the original legs, and the only other thing I needed was a piece of wood to drill a 1.25 inch wide by 3.25 inch deep hole for the shaft of the first stage of the center pole of the tree to fit into. I determined this by taking the measurements from the original stand as shown below:

I figured I could use a 4x4 piece of wood to drill the new hole for the base pole, and I found some old L brackets that were removed from an old garage door frame assembly that was removed when I changed my door from a standard side spring configuration to a center spring configuration. I remember the guy asking if I wanted the old hardware, and I said, sure I'll keep those!. I had no idea what I might use them for at that time. Then I found some 1/4 inch x 5/8 inch lag bolts that were lying around, but I had to buy a few more as I realized I did not quite have enough for this holiday project.

I made some measurements, cut and trimmed all the wood with my saw, bought a 1.24 inch spade bit for the hole for the shaft, mounted it on my drill press and bored out the hole from the 4x4 piece of wood. Once all the parts were cut, drilled, and trimmed to the proper length, I took the L brackets and bolts and drilled pilot holes for them, and here is the final result:

The hardware was overkill, but it is what I had lying around, so why not use it. One thing is for sure, this stand is even more sturdy that the original one. The thing I love the most about this is that the natural curve of the wood from the shape of the LE ribs is a natural fit for this stand. I didn't even really have to do any sanding or anything, since all this ends up under the tree mat anyway. It was as if those pieces of wood were meant for this little project - amazing! Drilling out that hole was sure a trip. Saw dust kept coming out of it like a volcano as I drove the bit down deeper and deeper. As always, clamping the wood to the drill press base was a challenge, but I used a metal drill press vise specially designed for the drill press base to help take care of that. The spade bit bored a perfect 1.25 inch hole in the 4x4 wood, but now I have a mess to clean up in the basement.

So this just goes to show that you never know what your airplane building skills will allow you to do outside of your project. It is also a great feeling when you can solve a problem without going out and buying something from a store that will most likely cost you more than if you come up with abetter, cheaper solution. Unless someone reads this post, or I tell them how I did it, nobody will ever know that the legs came from scrap wood I used for the airplane project!

KPR.