 |
d'Armond's Home |
| |
Klingon |
 |
Cozy Mark IV |
| |
Linguistics |
| |
FTS |
Cozy Mark IV : Time and Expenses
This page will detail the time and money spent building my airplane; this is basically my builder's log.
<- Chapter 4 | Home | Chapter 6 ->
| # | Desc | Date | Cost | Time (hours) | Details |
| 1. | Jigs | 9/19 | 1 | Traced out the jigs on the pine board. Looking for a way to get a smooth curve on the first jig. | |
| 2. | Jigs | 9/20 | 1 | Used a piece of cardboard to get a smooth curve, with my wife's help. Traced the curve on one, cut it out, and used it as a master for cutting the other three. All jigs are now cut. I never was good at doing jigsaw puzzles, and even though I thought I had figured out how to to get all the jigs from the 2 8' pine boards, it turns out I didn't. I had to form one of the short jigs from two smaller pieces, 5-minute epoxied together. Hopefully that'll be okay. | |
| 3. | Longerons | 9/27 | $386.79 | 4 | Materials are here! Nailed the jigs to the table, epoxied the
longerons together and clamped them to the jigs. While it was curing, I cut out the
stiffeners and doublers, and then floxed them to the longerons. The whole assembly
is now drying. Also, an event of note: I received my permanent private pilot's license from the FAA today! It's a plastic card (like a credit card), with nice pictures of the Wright brothers on it. |
| 4. | Fuselage sides | 9/28 | 9.30 | 5 | Took down the longerons and longeron jigs. Cut out the hardboard and foam to size, installed the fuselage side jigs (I used angle brackets, not bondo), nailed the hardboard to the jigs, and 5ME'd the foam to the hardboard. Doesn't sound like much, but that was a lot of work! |
| 5. | Fuselage sides | 9/29 | 5.5 | Cut out the fuselage spacers, micro'd them into place. Spent a lot
of time working on the angles, and worrying about how to cut the electrical conduit (since
there are no dimensions in the plans). Oddly enough, my plans had two Chapter 5 - Page 3 pages. |
|
| 6. | Fuselage sides | 9/30/03 | 12 | Sanded out the control stick and fuel gauge depressions. Sanded and
contoured all the spacers. I stapled some sandpaper to a thin scrap of wood, and ran
this all along between the two fuselage sides, to get a nice even finish there. After double-checking everything (including the fit of the longerons: A-OK), I was ready to glass. But I couldn't easily handle the task of rolling out the glass cloth. My family came to the rescue! Alec was in charge of mixing epoxy and slurry, and Amy helped applying the slurry, laying out the glass cloth, and applying the epoxy. It took us about 4 hours as a team; I am sure it would have taken me several more hours if I had done it all by myself. I have the best family ever! |
|
| 7. | Fuselage sides | 10/1/03 | 2 | Trimmed yesterday's UNI. Floxed the upper longerons into place. Floxed one lower longeron into place. Applied one ply BID over the exposed foam in the electrical conduit. | |
| 8. | Lower longerons | 10/2/03 | 3 | I realized this morning that the lower longerong I floxed into place had
slipped out of position by .5" on one side (the side that should be 17.25" is
now at 17.75"). After getting advice from the builder community, I used a
hand-held hacksaw blade to separate the longeron from the fuselage side about 10"
deep, and re-floxed the longeron in position. All dimensions are now correct. Floxed the other lower longeron into place. Floxed the lower longeron doublers into place. Applied the 4-plies UNI across the upper longerons. |
|
| 9. | LWX, LWY | 10/3/03 | 4 | Trimmed the cloth off the 4-plies UNI. Installed LWX and LWY on both
sides. I had used my table saw to cut the angles on LWX and LWY, and I realized that
this reduced the size of the pieces by about .25". I used a scrap of wood to
make an extension for these pieces, which now fit correctly into position. It was a
pain. I was worried about LWX/Y not fitting into place, but before floxing them down
I realized that the dimensions are given from the inside of the upper longeron, not the
top of the fuselage side, and when I made that correction they suddenly fit. Duh! Tonight I made the 2nd part of the electrical conduits and 5ME'd / taped them into place. I also cut out the foam to fill the section between the lower longeron, LWX/Y and the firewall. |
|
| 10. | LWX/Y | 10/4/03 | 1 | Installed the foam over the conduits, filled the cracks with dry micro, and let it dry overnight. | |
| 11. | LWX/Y | 10/5/03 | 1 | Glassed over the conduit area with the 6-plies of BID. I waited too long before knife trimming, so now the cutting is going to be much harder. :( | |
| 12. | Finish sides | 6/11/04 | 3 | Cut the fuselage sides to 101.75", cut out the main spar holes from aft side. Ready for assembly. |
Chapter total: Time = 42.5, Cost = $396.09
| Copyright (c) 2003, d'Armond Speers All Rights Reserved |
Last modified: Sunday, February 13, 2005 |