Sherwood Ranger - Tube Fabrication - 11B


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Split into yet another tube-specific page, as the 11A was getting too long...

8/23/11 - 1.125 tubes

1 hr - 1/4 hr sanding ends, scotchbriting, and deburring the id's of about a dozen short 1.125 tubes. 3/4 hr marking these for drilling.

8/24/11 - 1.125 tubes

1/2 hr - drilled some of these remaining short tubes. After doing a little checking today for lathe chucks, thinking I might put a lathe chuck in the drill press, put the short tubes in that, and use the drill press to turn the tubes while holding a file on the end to be chamfered, I saw a piece of 1" dowel on the bench today. Put a little masking tape on that to get the 1.125 tube to fit snug, then slipped a sample/scrap tube over the dowel, and a little more masking tape to hold the tube tight to the dowel, I just held the tube/dowel combo on the disk sander. And while rotating the dowel and checking often, I could get a good chamfer to form. Then run that on the scotchbrite to round down the edges and smooth out the disk sander marks, it's a nice end to the tube. Did one chamfer on a keeper part. Same method should work for the longer tubes that need to be done as well.

8/25/11 - 1.125 tubes

1/4 hr - record heat today. Over 100F in the garage at 8pm. Chamfered a couple more of the short tubes. Trick - only wrap about 1/2" of the dowel with tape, then slip the tube to be chamfered on from the un-taped end. That way any little burr from the holes in the tubes doesn't have to slip over the tape. Nearly got one stuck on the dowel because the burr was cutting into the tape when pulling the tube off. Need a new sanding disk for the disk sander.

Tube slipped over a dowel for a better grip on the disk sander.

Chamfered tube ends. Tube standing on end was the trial piece.

Chamfered tube in position. Looks good.

8/26/11 - 1.125 tubes, 1.0 tubes

1/4 hr - replaced sanding disk on disk sander and sanded a bunch more chamfers onto tube ends. 1/4 hr - identified and marked tail ribs for v-slots. The v-slots allow the 1.0 tubes to be flattened at the aft/outboard ends to wrap around the 0.5 diameter trailing edge tubes.

8/27/11 - 1.125 tubes

1/4 hr - chamfered some more tube ends. Pulled the long ones out of the aft frame and chamfered those. Looks like longer tubes will be no problem to chamfer on the disk sander.

9/3/11 - 1.125 tubes

1/4 hr - 2 fishmouthed tubes. Not sure where these go, but cut them to length, rough trimmed the fishmouths with snips, and finished with a round file. With some iterations of trial fitting, I got a pretty good curve on the ends of these. Also fortunate to get a little time on this today after spending 3 hours this morning getting the annual on the other plane started...

These tubes don't actually go together like this - just showing the fit of the fishmouth achieved with a couple minutes' of filing.

Made up a sample of the tail rib v-cut where these go from 1.0 dia to 0.5 dia along the trailing edges. Did this quick on the bandsaw - not very accurate cutting through the side of the tube that you can't see. May try this again with snips depending on wall thickness.

At first tried smashing the tube end flat in the vise, using little spacer plates to bring the squeeze action up out of the vise jaws. The tube slipped all over the place. Then I remembered this right-angle hand seamer. Squeezes it pretty easy, and the jaws have a little roughness to keep the tube from moving around. I'll probably hold off doing the actual tubes though because the wrap around the trailing edge tube isn't perpendicular - the trailing edge crosses these rib tubes at an angle.

9/10/11 - order odd-size tubes

Progress has been practically non-existent this past week as last weekend I started the annual on the other plane, found some parts that I needed to make for it. Did that this week and got them installed yesterday. But I did finally place the order with onlinemetals.com for the odd sized tubes - ones where the requirement is well under 12 feet.

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