3/26/08 2:30


Hooray, finished my first wing rib! I showed my practice pieces to Timm who gave me some good advice on gluing. On Monday evening I glued up my first full rib. Found myself using about a dozen clamps as well as the jig, to get everything in nice and tight. Was away for a couple of days and came back this evening to pull it out. Had been worrying about having glued the rib to my jig but it came out without too much fuss. The tip of putting greaseproof paper down really worked well. Am pleased with the result... it looks & feels "right". Will have the experts look at it before declaring it usable, though. Now I need to get the production line running... only 45 more to go! I think they will take me a couple of hours each.

This is the video that gave me the idea about cams on the wing rib jig. It stars Timm Bogenhagen from the EAA staff who tells me he got it from Wayne Ison, designer of the Minimax.

3/23/08 17:00

Two steps forward, one step back...

After feeling that I'd made a lot of progress, last weekend ended in disappointment as I realised that I'd been working to incorrect information. The "full size wing rib" diagram on the plans was not in fact full size. It meaured 58 inches, when the chord is supposed to be 61.5 inches. There must have been some shrinkage in the plans copying process. It was (in hindsight) a stupid error not to have measured it before launching into my work...but, lesson learned. Apart from the capstrip, everything else I've made went into the scrap bin.

I was a bit depressed at first about throwing away so much work, but after a while it was a relief to think that I found the error as early as I did. Also, a lot of my work wasn't wasted - a lot of it is "thinking & working things out", that won't need to be repeated.

Played with the large plans copier at Kinkos and after some trial and error discovered that increasing the size to 102.2% got all the dimensions right. Spent most of Saturday making patterns for the front, middle & rear plywood sections. Shaping and sanding the lightening holes is no less laborious the second time around. But everything seemed to go a lot faster, and was helped by having a second copy of the full size wing rib that I could cut out and use.

Started making my wing rib jig today, and made quite a lot of progress with it. Next step will be to glue up my first rib. One of the EAA "Hints for Homebuilders" videos was really helpful in giving me an idea to use locking cams in the jig. These will work perfectly (I think).

Experimented with soaking and pre-bending my capstrip, also I have glued up a couple of sample pieces to start getting a feel for gluing (those discarded pieces in the scrap bin coming in useful...) Ordered a load more wood from Aircraft Spruce.

Paul Poberezny and Chuck Parnall stopped by this afternoon. Paul seemed satisfied with the quality of my work, which was comforting to hear. This week Paul put me in touch with a guy called Joe Hauk here in Wisconsin who is about 5 years into a Pup project. He sent me some photos and has done great work. Look forward to catching up with him at some point.

3/15/08 10:30

Did a couple of hours yesterday evening and most of the day today. Janet also gets credited with her first hour! This update is in photo format with captions:

3/13/08 2:00

Not a very productive couple of weeks... I went home to England last weekend so didn't get anything done. Did, however, have a good talk with Kermit Weeks, who has a couple of Pups that he's sent away to have restored. He says the Pup is a very nice flying aeroplane and thinks I should shoot for a 80hp Le Rhone, says they are obtainable, and it's as solid an engine as the rotaries ever got. Spent a couple of hours this evening after work continuing to "set up shop" - finished building my wood bench, assembled my drill press and mounted the table router properly on a base. The shop is pretty much done now so I will aim to make progress on the wing ribs at the weekend and take some photos for the first time.

3/1/08 6:00

Finished routing all 200 feet of capstrip and my arms are aching from using new muscles! Went pretty well, I was unhappy with perhaps 10 feet. It is interesting to compare the qualities of the different pieces of spruce... the tight-grained strips are very easy to work and I had no problems with them; much more trouble with pieces where the grain was space farther apart, the router was sometimes ripping the wood rather than cutting it cleanly. My attention now turns to the plywood webs. I made a plywood pattern for the nose web and used it to rout out a trial piece... came out OK. I am worrying a bit about how perfect and precise I need to be, not that that's a bad thing. It's helpful to go in the Museum and look at the uncovered aeroplanes (it's really helpful to look at the Curtiss Jenny), other examples of wing ribs in displays, etc to "calibrate" myself on what are acceptable standards.