Thursday, August 2, 2007

Stringers

Build hours: 76
The stringers for both planes were cut from the end of a sheet of .020 6061 with the Malco snips. Even though a shear would be nice, the big Malco snips make nice clean cuts with relative ease. The layout was done for the flange lines and relief holes were drilled at the corner of the tabs. The blank was loaded into the brake. Bend, flip, and bend again. Duckbill pliers was used to bend the end tabs. A small amount of length adjustment can be made by changing the tab bend. Two holes were drilled on the center line of each bulkhead, top and bottom, at 1/4" and 3/4" from the flange. Each stringer was then centered on the bulkhead and aligned with a wood block to be flush with the flange or tight inside of the flange, drilled and clecoed.

Plan Note:
The plans show a parts layout on the aluminum sheets. I would guess this is the layout used for laser cutting the parts. It is not always practical to follow these layouts if you are scratch building, i.e. - the stringers are made from .020 and are wedged in all around the a-b, and b-c skins that require patterns to be made at a later time. The stringers were cut from the end of the .020 sheet as required.

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