You know, for a guy who is building an aluminum airplane I sure did a lot of wood work this week. Two projects had to get completed. First I sold my 3 blade Catto prop to a nice guy from New York. That means I have to ship it and that means finding a way to pack it so it survives the shipping process (something not easily done). After several phone calls I found that the best way to ship it is through a regular carrier and I chose to use EngineShipping.com again. They require a pallet for the prop so my 50 pounds worth of prop, spinner, extension and other related gear turned into 100 pounds with the specially designed pallet.
Wood project two was a new stand for my dimpler. I originally built a platform that I could wrap around the dimpler as it sat on my bench. Well that wont work for these really long wing skins so I decided to build a small mobile stand that I could sit beside or between my benches. This way I can feed the skins from one table to the other without as much risk of bending.
Once all that was done I did get the two top right wing skins dimpled. Next up, dimple the ribs, trim the leading edge corners where they overlap, and then start a long process of riveting the top skins on.
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| This is actually two pallets put together to make one that is 6 feet long. There is a support in the middle that holds the prop vertical as well as make sure that any down force is focused on the hub in the middle. Lots of plastic wrap and I think this is ready to go. |
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| This is the new cart for the dimpler. It worked well on the first set of wing skins. |
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| Here you can sort of see that it is at the right height so that my skins can feed from one bench to the other. Of course the dimpler cart can move back and forth to keep the skins on the table. I remember doing this on my 9 wings without the cart and I had to do all kinds of funky stuff to try to keep the skins level. |
