And now for something completely different.
This time both the place and topic differs significantly. Due to the great weather and the fact that we need to use the saw a lot, we decided to work outside (in front of the workshop). This way all the saw dust is blown away, which reduces cleanup. This time no Aluminum but Wood!
Nope the RV-7 does not contain any wooden parts, however according to the manual and drawing DWG-12A we need to build a Wing Stand to be able to work on the wings. A Fuel Tank Cradle to build the Fuel Tanks and a Wing Cradle to store the wings.
Let’s start with the easy part, the Fuel Tank Cradle.
The Fuel Tank is not (as you might expect) some plastic tank inside the wings. However you have to build it from Aluminum and the hardest part is to rivet all the holes and use Tank Sealant so it’s actually not leaking.
There are hundreds of rivet holes in the skin that holds the Fuel, so there is a serious challenge ahead.
I deviated just a teeny bit, by using some obsolete crating material to make side stands to give the Fuel Tank Cradle more stability.
Since my workshop has no flat ceiling and the plans show a Wing Stand as two poles between ceiling and floor, I pondered with the idea to integrate the Wing Stand with the Wing Cradle. We checked the plans and made several designs.
Although novel, we came to the conclusion that it would make a nice Wing Cradle, but a lousy Stand. Hence we rejected the idea and build the Wing Cradle.
The goal is to re-use the crating material, that came with the Wing kit. There was so many wood in those crates that with some minor deviations from the plans you can re-use all material
The top and bottom plates of the crates are sawed to boards and stacked together. This makes the left and right side of the Cradle.
As indicated by the plans, we use the leading edge ribs to draw the silhouette with some extra size to enable inserting carpet in between to prevent damaging the Aluminum skin of the wing.
Next task is sawing the form of the side board. I forgot to take a final picture and my camera’s battery died, so no end result (I’ll add it later).
Time: 4 Hours, Rivets: 0/0
Video
