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I painted the metal pieces and started going through the manual
and followed the steps for assembly. This manual does not tell you how to make
the fixtures or the pieces, but it gives you the steps to assemble, rig, cover,
etc. I started on the assembly of the upper and lower wings. There’s a lot of
pieces and very time consuming, but very satisfying.
Once the wings were completed, I set the upper and the two lower
wings aside and started looking at the fuselage. Another order to Wicks, and all
the tubing arrived. I was ready to start on the fuselage. I called Aviat to
question them on the welding process they did on the factory built planes.
Sounds like they Tig weld all their fuselages, but they told me gas welding was
the preferred method of many of the homebuilders. I purchased the welding video
from EAA and watched it several times. I took several pieces of tubing – gas
welded some of the pieces. Then Tig welded some of the pieces. In both cases I
normalized the welds. I cut the joints on the gas-welded pieces to see if I had
good penetration, then done the same on the Tig pieces. Both pieces seem to have
good welds, but I found the gas welding to be more user friendly. I then took a
sample of both pieces clamped them in a vise, then started to bend them back and
forth to see which one broke first. I was surprised to see the Tig welded pieces
cracked first. After several practice pieces, I was ready to start cutting and
fitting tubing for the fuselage. Made another fixture for the fuselage and got
started. |
