Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater
Building a Biplane: On the Cusp of Wings
When I started this madcap airplane build in 2017, I decided I'd begin with wings. They're easier to store than a fuselage, and I was more comfortable with my woodworking skills. There are four of them, so once you've figured out one of them, the others should come a bit easier.
So, I started building ribs. I spent (checks dashboard) almost 250 hours building ribs. Then, practically speaking, I had to pack up the build and move, and that put a bit stop on any building. It's hard to build airplane parts when they're all packed away in a storage unit.
When I got to my new house, which has a blessedly large detached garage, I had some work ahead of me, getting the shop ready for its central role in the build: it needed to be spruced up, so I had someone in to put fancy paint on the floor, installed a whole lot of electrical outlets, put in insulation and drywall, and finally had the door replaced. Right around that time, the Covid lockdown happened, and suddenly I had a nice space to work in, and a whole lot of free time as all my social engagements dried up.
With ribs built and spars bought, I thought I was pretty close to building some wings, back in 2018. For better or worse, I was skipping over a few things in my head: I had to build wedge blocks, and I had to prepare all the brackety bits that go into the wing. I'd already gotten the brackets in a kit, but I had kind of handily forgotten they all had to be welded together and painted. Surely that can't take too long, right?
So, here it is, nearly December of 2020, and when I started the project back up again in April of this year, I was at 375 hours on the build. Today, the tally stands at 791. I am, as of tonight, finally done with all the things I think I need to do before I can start assembling a wing. I was a little bit wrong about being ready in 2018, let's say.
Granted, I could have shortcut the process to get to wing assembly earlier: I've built every single part I should need for all four wings. It made more sense to tackle each job completely and get it all done, and not have to come back and tool up for the next wing's parts.
And I think, fingers crossed, that I should be able to build a wing pretty fast now. All the parts are built, right? (Of course not, but all the parts are built that could be built before the wing is assembled. There are a few that need to wait until there's a wing sitting there to get some dimension just right.) I'm sure I'll still figure out how to take many months to build the first wing, but hopefully the second through fourth wings will go a bit faster. Hopefully the first wing doesn't take years, but I suppose it might. Somehow the ribs, which I thought should take 6 months, ended up taking almost a year and a half to finish.
The process of building up the wing is a subject of some mystery to me. Mark Gilmore wrote up a handy list at the end of this article, which I'm using as my broad instruction sheet for wing assembly. However, it makes a lot of assumptions, and glides blithely over a whole lot of details. I get the broad strokes, but I have a feeling I'll get tripped up in the details over and over.
At least for tomorrow (or the next time I can get out to the shop, anyway), the plan is clear enough: unpack some ribs, slide them on to the wing spars, and see how things look. Try clamping some wedge blocks and brackets onto the spars, to see how it all actually fits together. A whole lot of things will probably become clear at that point.
From there, it's just a matter of narrowing down the tasks to things that are small enough to comprehend, and start going down the list. And oh what a list it will be, I'm sure.
Posted at 23:07 permanent link category: /charger
Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater