probly  be some torque roll as well 

well, you don't do much for me, but

all right then - to business......

plans call for the firewall being 3/4 plywood  .... I asked Vaillencourt about that since the design is from the '80's back when big gassers were kinda rough.. He said that the firewall could be a lot lighter since todays 50's were a lot smoother than the Quadra 50 the plan is designed for, but the plane needs a lot of nose weight anyway..

So, might as well use thick wood which helps absorb what vibration there is... better than couple pounds of lead and stuff..

I rough cut 2 firewalls, then using the engine mount template I screwed them together and used my belt sander to smooth the profile....

Now I'm cutting 1/8" x 1/4" notches (only 52 in the firewall  ) - likely be a while 

Ha! don't say I didn't warn you .

hmmmmmm, Sierra retracts have arrived - the 15 deg rotate is a cam built onto the top of the strut, with a groove cut into the inside of the "box". The cam runs in the groove and turns 15 deg as the gear closes.... super, and looks pretty strong (which it will have to be, I Know, I know  )

only one former to go 

had to fit this in a break

all right boys and girls....finally, something to post.  (try to keep the applause down) Finished the formers last night, so here is a fuselage short kit.
You can see the formers are notched to fit over the crutch, which will be the 2 long sticks laying on the bottom of the pic. They are 56" long and will sit on a jig with uprights at each former. With everything centered, and clamped, hopefully things will go together moderately straight. "Things going together" interprets to mean 1/8 x 1/2 balsa strips will be laid in the notches, front to back.
The 2 panels are wing saddles and are glued to the crutches, running from the firewall to former 8, also fitting in notches in the formers.
Each former slot took at least 3 cuts - one down the center, one down either side, then slide side to clear the slot...since there are something like 356 slots (count 'em Glen to check for sure) , that's 356 x .....carry the 7, divide by 2.4 - something over 1000 cuts. 
In all this I only broke 1 saw blade  .
The crutch sticks started as a 56" long piece of 1x3 kiln dried pine. Would have been easier if I had a table saw, but eventually wound up with a bunch of 1/4 x 1/2 pine sticks, quite a few dull #11 Xacto blades and a lot of tooth picks.

So material consumption so far is 7 sheets of 1x4 lite ply (1/8); chunk of 3/4 ply, chunk of 3/8 ply, and chunk of 1/2 ply. Of course I made a copy of all this stuff, so I do have a second fuse kit, set aside for future use. And by the way, these results are called a short kit, I guess because we're short the rest of the wood to actually make a fuselage.

Resulting from these efforts, I also have leftover 2'x2' pieces of 3/4 ply, 3/8 ply, 1/2 ply, and a massive pile of scrap 1/8 ply......I will sell that at a very good price.......let's call it a pigmy kit, or dwarf kit...

Danster wrote on Mar 6^th, 2013 at 7:25pm:



I agree Dan. Pleasant to be working with saw dust in the nose and eyes again, while trying to keep the fingers out of the saw blade..

Now, before I can build, I have to build the jig..

Yak Man wrote on Mar 7^th, 2013 at 6:51am:



second kit is already there (partially).....   since it's been made known that Glennie already has 2 of these beasts, my lawyer is in the process of changing my willie.....

Glen wrote on Mar 7^th, 2013 at 9:38pm:






yeh, but ask Goering