Flying on the Cheap - Wood

wrote:

Fred is bucking additional headwinds in that he has zero woodworking
experience, doesn't own a table saw and has only a limited amount of
shop space.

I've never had a table saw of my own either. I now have a little 9
inch Delta bandsaw though, and I find for this sort of light-duty
resawing, I like it rather better than a table saw, in part because the
smaller kerf means less wood reduced to powder in the conversion of
"white wood" shelves into longerons or rib sticks. Lots of sawmills
use bandsaws - big, scarey ones - for sawing balks into finished
lumber.

Making up a scarfing fixture tends to drive a lot of homebuilders crazy
as they fiddle and tweak, ..... This degree of accuracy
can be achieved using nothing more complicated than fixtures assembled
from scrap wood, one for scarfing solid stock, the other for scarfing
plywood. In each case the wood gets clamped in the fixture and the
same cutter - - a portable circular saw - - is used on both.

For the benefit of the readers, here are a few scarfing web pages for
inspection.

http://www.marisystems.com/ellipticat/page4.htm I've used one very
much like this with a hand plane, after roughing the cut with a
japanese saw. Use a fairly large plane, with a lot of plane ahead and
behind to the blade to guide you if you use this method or you'll end
up planing the jig.

That was the only decent link I found on scarfing solid wood.
Scarfing plywood has lots more links, and some of these methods can be
adoped to small stringers - just stack a bunch of them side-by-side,
and they start to look like a sheet of plywood.

http://www.seqair.com/skunkworks/Woo...ig/Gauger.html
for plywood. Gougeon, the WEST epoxy people, sell a device like this
for a Skilsaw that works very well.
http://www.boat-links.com/scarf_bevels.html Free-handing plywood scarfs
http://www.menestrel.org.uk/scarfing_plywood.htm A sander approach.

Finally, "The Gougeon Brothers On Boat Construction" devotes a whole
chapter to scarfing, both dimensional lumber and plywood, and is widely
available in libraries. Other books on wooden boat building may also
cover it, but of the two I've kept from the dozens I used to have, only
this one did.

This brings to mind several things about building on the cheap.

A couple years ago one of the locals who is not a pilot, but was
interested in building an airplane decided to build an Emeraud.

The project was a prime example of "building on the cheap". The
builder has been in poor health most of his life and has only worked
at a few non demanding odd jobs so he had little money.

He scrounged, for just about everything and eventually ended up with a
good looking airplane. He some where he found an APU with a good 125
HP engine ... Cheap! He did a very nice job of construction and I
think you could probably find examples of just about everything Bob
said in the original post. However when he got to the engine he
didn't have the money for it even if it was cheap. So at this point he
took on a partner with two things in mind. One was money for the
engine and the other was a pilot who could take him for rides in his
airplane.

Welll... best laid plans...
I've mentioned this airplane before. It's the one where the new
partner had only been checked out in, I believe it was a two seat
Cessna tail dragger. The Emeraud with 125 HP was a different animal.

They were doing taxi tests when for some reason instead of easing in
the power the new partner firewalled it. The thing went ballistic with
the nose coming up higher and higher. He panicked and pulled the power
instead of shoving the nose down. So what goes straight up will pretty
much come straight down. Fortunately there was a slight cross wind.
Very slight as it was almost calm, but it was enough. The wing had
enough lift to bring the nose back up and it impacted just to the side
of the runway. It hit hard enough to drive the wheels (with tires)
into the ground far enough for the wing the hit the ground.

The only damage to this "Flying on the Cheap", wood airplane was the
gear and struts ripped off the main spar, a foot long vertical crack
in the bottom fiberglass cowl, and two sets of teeth marks in the
glare shield. Well, the prop was kinda short which meant the engine
had to be rebuilt ... again, but the point is this was one of the
"stick built", scrounged parts, "Flying on the Cheap" airplanes and it
came out of the crash far better than you could have expected from a
Cessna or Piper.

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com


Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com