2007 - Page 1 - Start

June 17th, 2007 - Purchased the plans in May. They are provided as PDF files. Waited a few days for them to arrive via CD as they were too big to make it through e-mail. Located local supplier for wood and a local shop with an automated router that can take CNC files. Tally-Ho sends the files directly to the shop - so I'm waiting for them to receive the files. Plotted off a full set of plans provided so far (wing, canopy, and engine not available yet). Downloaded and printed all color photos from the web site and put in a binder for reference. Printed up instruction manual and also put in a binder. Printed out an 8.5 x 11 set of drawings for reference too. Saves a lot of leafing through the big sheets. Made this web site and started logging progress.

June 18th, 2007 - 2.0 hours. - Cut out Elevator Pulley Brackets from flat 4130 steel. Ground to shape. Marked for drilling and bending.

June 19th, 2007 - 1.0 hours - 3.0 total - Sanded and polished edges of Elevator Pulley Brackets. Purchased some finished lumber to make the elevator/ruder jig. Had a heck of a time finding two pieces of 10ft long 1X6 that were perfectly straight and square! Ended up having to buy red oak as it was the only straight flat pieces I could find. It was pretty spendy, but considering how critical the trueness of the tail surfaces are, I decided it was a good investment.

June 21st, 2007 - 1.0 hours - 4.0 total - Marked and drilled holes in Elevator Pulley Brackets. Cleaned up holes and slight marking from being clamped in drill press vise

June 22nd, 2007 - 1.5 hours - 5.5 total - Roughed up surface of Elevator Pulley Brackets with emery cloth in preparation for priming. Bent to shape, polished up again with emery cloth to remove vise marks and any other residue, then gave them one coat of primer. Picked up all of the plywood and spruce pieces to make stabilizer and elevator from the hardwood shop. Got new blade for table saw to cut spruce to size.

June 23rd, 2007 - 2.5 hours - 8.0 hours total - Put second coat of primer on Elevator Pulley Brackets. They're finished - officially the first parts finished on this project! Cut out, drilled, ground, sanded and put first coat of primer on Elevator Trim Tab Horn.

June 25th, 2007- 1.0 - 9.0 total - Traced out 2nd Trim Tab Horn on metal sheet to cut out later. Placed order with Aircraft Spruce for hardware needed for Trim Tab Horns and Elevator Pulley Brackets.

June 26th, 2007 - 2.0 - 11.0 total - Cut out second trim tab horn. Ground down, shaped, drilled, bent, sanded, and primed with two coats.

June 27th, 2007 - 0 hours - 11 total - Checked with Terri again to see where the CNC files were for the cutting shop and found our e-mails had been trapped in "SPAM Filter Land". He said he'd get them out right away. Had a long discussion about engine options. He's advising me to pick up a well broken in (100,000 mile plus) Chevy SB35 steel engine block if I can find one as they are becoming difficult to locate. I was surprised to find I'm supposed to use a steel block, but the nose evidently needs a lot of weight and its better to put it in the engine than just a bunch of ballast. Haven't really decided on an engine yet, but will check with the local wrecking yards to see what they've got.
June 28th, 2007 - 0 hours - 11 total - Checked with cutting shop and they have the files! Scheduled to cut out the wood empennage parts on July 2nd. Will find out in a few days if I'll be building a new garage/ shop so am waiting on building the tail jig for now. Sheet metal should arrive from Aircraft Spruce tomorrow so I will have plenty to
do making fittings for a while.

June 29th, 2007 - 4.5 hours - 15.5 total - Aircraft Spruce order showed up today. Put the elevator pulleys together. Pulleys were rubbing slightly on the brackets. Bent the tips with the cotter pins outwards a couple of degrees. Took care of the rubbing. Tried the nut plates on the trim tab horns and found I had drilled the rivet holes slightly too far apart. Marked and drilled new holes. Clamping them in the vise with rubber jaw inserts caused the primer to slide around and clump up on the pieces? Either too much primer, the wrong kind of paint, or it wasn't set up yet? Ground, wire brushed,
sanded and acetoned all the paint off and put on a new lighter coat. Need to get some solid rivets to fasten the nut plates on.

June 30th, 2007 - 4.0 hours - 19.5 total - Counter sunk new holes in trim tab horns, mounted nut plates with counter sunk AN rated pull rivets. Primed with very light coat. Trim tab horns are finished now. Printed out full size templates of all remaining metal parts in empennage. Planned out how many of each piece and which thickness of sheet metal to use for each. Marked and cut out Rudder Horn Stiffener Plate. Tried spray glue to hold paper template to sheet metal for cutting, but it moved when clamping down the piece - reverted to tracing with Sharpie. Sorted, labeled, and stored extra parts from last Aircraft Spruce order. Need to place another order for the rest of the empennage hardware - bolts, nut plates, washers, etc.

July 1st, 2007 - 6 hours - 25.5 total - Cut out, drilled, and cleaned up Rudder Horn. Started rough bend on Back Reinforcement Plate. Still need to bend it a bit more to get it to fit right for welding. Spent a lot of time setting up new wire brush wheel and polishing/grinding pads. Am having a lot of trouble with the holes I'm drilling on my drill press turning out triangular instead of circular. Never had this before. Have tried multiple bits and clamping methods. Don't know if the chuck or my drill press are loose, maybe poor quality, or if I'm doing something else wrong. I'm able to clean up the holes and make them round, but they end up being slightly larger than they should. End holes in the rudder horn are supposed to take 1/4 in O.D. bushings, but the holes in this pieces are a little bigger than that. Will have to see how it all works when I put it together. Also need to find a shop or someone to do the welding. I don't have the tools or the expertise!

July 2nd to the 7th, 2007 - 5 hours - 30.5 total - Contacted the local metal cutting shop that has a precision hydro-cutter, took by all the plate metal pieces I'd bought. They said they should have them cut by Tuesday 7-10. Only having them do the parts associated with the empennage right now. Went by the local aircraft parts store and
got some more of the hardware pieces - bolts, nuts, etc. There were several items they didn't stock so did another Aircraft Spruce order for the remaining items. Have found a couple of minor mistakes on the plans where the wrong part number is given, or certain required information isn't provided. Takes quite a bit of on-line research and referring to different sections of the plans to identify the part numbers for the exact parts needed. Still waiting on the bank to see if I'll be building a new garage/shop so am not starting the tail jig yet as I might not have anyplace to put it for a while! Also waiting on the wood cutting shop as they are all out of town for the 4th of July holiday. Talked briefly to a local EAA member who runs a small fabrication and machine shop about doing the welding. I might be able to use his services when it come to the landing gear also - which are very complex and almost totally scratch built.
July 11th, 2007 0 hours - 30.5 total - Picked up the water cut metal parts for the shop. They are cut extremely well. I've contacted the EAA/machine shop guy who says he should be able to do the welding and bending that I need. He's also interested in helping with the landing gear. I haven't cleaned up the metal pieces yet. If you look closely at the photo you can see some very small tabs that the shop had to leave on the small parts so they wouldn't loose them in the cutting machine. Also have decided not to build a shop/garage right now, so now I will need to figure out where I can build the jig for the tail?

August 9th, 2007 - 1 hours - 31.5 total - Gave all the metal parts to Rick Crisenbery - the local EAA guy with a machine shop I mentioned earlier. He started working on bending and welding the pieces and found a lot of very small mistakes with the specs on the drawings and the CNC files. The elevator and rudder hinge brackets don't allow enough material for any bend radius and still position the hinge centerline far enough
away from the base of the bracket. Rick will make me seven new elevator brackets, and use three of the old elevator brackets to make the rudder hinge brackets - as there is enough material to modify them into rudder brackets. There are several inconsistencies between specs for the same parts on different drawings. Nothing that can't be overcome, but it takes quite a bit of searching and e-mailing back and forth with Terry to get it figured out. The forward elevator horn bracket that is the base and
pivot point for the forward elevator horn shows one set of holes round and the other as a slot to allow for alignment. Unfortunately the CNC files show all of the holes as slots - so that's how they were cut by the hydro-cutter. I may be able to salvage the parts by drilling them out to round holes and using larger bolts? Need to check on that. Rick brought by the completed elevator and rudder horns. They need to be cleaned up, Descaled, and primed. Also, Rick pointed out that all of the holes are slightly under sized. He thinks the cutting shop might have done that on purpose to allow me to size the holes myself.

November 18th, 2007 - 2 hrs - 33.5 total Started cleaning up the rudder and elevator horns. Cut some of the wood pieces for the empennage jig. Talked to Rick about an ETA on the rest of the parts I gave him to do. Studied the full size template plans for a while to plan how to lay the parts out on the plywood to cut them out.
November 23rd, 2007 - 5.5 hrd - 38.5 total Transferred full size templates to wood by cutting out and tracing pattern. Cut out Horiz Stab Main and Rear Spars and Elevator Spar, two pieces each that will need to be scarf jointed together. Cut out all 12 ribs. Trimmed and sanded to shape. Matched ribs left to right in pairs and sanded to exact
same shape. Made up scarf joint jig, but don't want to cut joint till I've got the glue and am ready to make the joint. Pieces cut so far don't have internal cut outs such as slots in spars for rib nose tabs, or lightning holes in ribs done yet.
November 24th, 2007 1.5 hrs - 40.0 total. Cleaned up workbench. Laid out and traced Jack Ribs (4ea), Elevator Trim Tab Spar (2ea), Elevator End Caps - Inboard(4ea) and Outboard(4 ea). Cut out remaining elevator nose rib patterns. Still have a few more pieces to trace onto 1/8" stock.
November 25th, 2007 1.0 hrs - 41.0 total. Traced Elevator Nose Ribs and a few other misc parts onto wood.
November 29th, 2007 2.0 hrs - 43.0 total. Cut out a sanded to shape all elevator nose ribs, trim tab ribs, and all end cap ribs. Have finished cutting out and shaping everything for the horiz stab and elevator. Still need to notch the various spars to accept all the ribs. Still need to cut and shape lightning holes in ribs. Bought some epoxy, thickener and epoxy pumps today. Sticker shock on the pricing!

December 1st 2007 - 2.0 hrs - 45 hrs total - Started drawing the lightening holes onto the stab ribs. Also drawing the cut lines to separate the ribs and elevator. Found best way to get accurate positioning when transferring drawing to wood is to tape the paper pattern on the wood piece then use a tack or fine nail to poke through the paper and leave a small hole in the wood. Then pull off the paper and finish drawing the shape. For the circles I've been using a compass since I can't find my circle template. Seems like every lightening hole is just a slightly different size from the rest! I don't think I'll find hole saws the right size for many of them and will end up finishing them to size with a spindle sander.

December 3rd 2007 - 1.5 hrs - 46.5 hrs total. Finished marking all the ribs for cutting
December 4th 2007 2.0 hrs - 48.0 hrs total. Traced out more lightening holes and slots on remaining horiz stab and elevator parts. Cut a couple of trial slots in trim tab spar. Started the slot with a punch tool, then used ream bit in Dremel tool to make the slot. Works pretty good!

The really manual method - cut out the template and trace it on the wood

Rough cutting the horiz stab spars before trimming with band saw and finishing with belt sander

Drawing the lightening holes on the horizontal stabilizer ribs

Rough cutting the horiz stab spars before trimming with band saw and finishing with belt sander

Drawing the lightening holes on the horizontal stabilizer ribs

The variable size hole cutter works really well!

Got a lot of them cut, but still a few more to go. Note that each rib in this picture is actually two ribs tacked together - one for each side of the tail.

December 8th 2007 4.5 hrs - 56.5 hrs total. Finished cutting lightening holes in ribs. Still 4 small ribs that I haven't cut out yet that go in the HS and Elevator tips, but all other ribs are done.
December 13th, 2007 2.0 hrs - 58.5 hrs total. Out at Steve's shop, made the tail jig. Once we completed it we started trying to determine what it will be used for and can't really tell from the instructions? It is supposed to be absolutely square, flat and straight - which it is, but I can't see how it will be used as nothing appears to touch or be clamped to anything but the base? Guess I'll find out when I use it.

Bruce's Spitfire

2007 - Page 1 - Start

Completed Elevator Pulley Brackets

Completed Trim Tab Horn (Port side)

Completed Elevator Pulleys

Re-drilled and re-primed Trim Tab Horns

Completed Trim Tab Horns

Rudder Horn and Back Plate

Hydro-cut steel parts for the empennage

Close up of hydro cut Elevator Horn

Welded Rudder and Elevator Horns

The really manual method - cut out the template and trace it on the wood

Rough cutting the horiz stab spars before trimming with band saw and finishing with belt sander

Rough cutting the horiz stab spars before trimming with band saw and finishing with belt sander

Rough cutting the horiz stab spars before trimming with band saw and finishing with belt sander

Rough cutting the horiz stab spars before trimming with band saw and finishing with belt sander

Rough cutting the horiz stab spars before trimming with band saw and finishing with belt sander

Drawing the lightening holes on the horizontal stabilizer ribs

Rough cutting the horiz stab spars before trimming with band saw and finishing with belt sander

Drawing the lightening holes on the horizontal stabilizer ribs

The variable size hole cutter works really well!

Got a lot of them cut, but still a few more to go. Note that each rib in this picture is actually two ribs tacked together - one for each side of the tail.

Got a lot of them cut, but still a few more to go. Note that each rib in this picture is actually two ribs tacked together - one for each side of the tail.

Got a lot of them cut, but still a few more to go. Note that each rib in this picture is actually two ribs tacked together - one for each side of the tail.

Got a lot of them cut, but still a few more to go. Note that each rib in this picture is actually two ribs tacked together - one for each side of the tail.

Got a lot of them cut, but still a few more to go. Note that each rib in this picture is actually two ribs tacked together - one for each side of the tail.

All the ribs (except four that go in the tips) the spars (less the fir strips), and trim tabs. The drum set in the photo to give an idea of size.