Distractions

I have not updated for a while because there has been no real progress. Friday, I finished shrinking the fabric on the door to 350 degrees then applied the first coat of poly brush. I'm not sure what I did wrong, I had the door flat when I put the stuff on and it looked great. When I went to turn it over it was obvious that too much had gone thru the fabric and was running on the inside. The manual say's that is OK as long as it does not drip thru and dry on the inside of the opposite side. It was so hot, and this disappointment took the wind out of my sails and progress came to a halt. I decided to let this dry a couple days and then evaluate it again. Here it is , I sure got penetration.!

After looking at some other doors, I've decided to put a couple stitches on the two tubes I welded in. This should help with the paint cracking on the other doors I looked at. It's easy to get discouraged by this Stits process, it really looks like shit before the final paint goes on. You won't see any of this when the Poly spray goes on.
Saturday morning I flew the Trojan down to Franklin to the EAA pancake breakfast, the wind was blowing out of the SW so it was a 83 mph trip down at 1500 ft. Trojan man really likes this girl so I parked him close. I told him she looks like she's got issues to me, but he does not care.

The same owner that let this happen also owns this "unlucky lady". If you search the web you will see that both of these were really nice airplanes just a few years ago.

  Sunday was spent watching football, yet another disappointment. The Redskins suck for another year.
It finally started to rain today, it's been a long time since it has rained here . So I made a trip down to Harbor Freight to replace the paint shaker. I  decided to take this one apart to see if it would help trouble shoot mine.
However the design has been changed, mine has two separate poppet type valves and the new one has only one flapper type valve. Here's a shot of the new one.

By comparing the two it is obvious that the piston O ring in mine is worn out. I will have to try and find a metric replacement as my SAE replacement is a little too small. I decided to go cheap with the replacement and I will fix my first one as a backup. With the amount of painting on this project , I can't get by without it.
I hope to make some progress tomorrow. Not much else to do with the rain.

Door covering

Not much progress on Wednesday. It's been really hot and I had some visitors . I had good intentions and managed to get a few parts primed  . I disassembled  the two throttle arms and removed the multiple coats of old paint and rust, I bead blasted the turnbuckle fittings on the rudder cables that were a little rusty, and I cleaned the trim handle for repaint. The door actuating arms were already prepared for paint.  Here they are all primed.

While I was painting these parts, a guy showed up from the city's codes and compliance department. Seems that "someone" complained about my dilapidated Chevy Van/Storage unit. He explained that it had to be parked on a gravel or paved surface. I explained that where it was parked it was shielded from the road by my hedge and trees . That it could hardly be seen. I can only assume that he thought it was not road legal, because the look on his face was priceless when I got in fired it up and backed it out on the street in front of the house. I will leave it there for a week just to piss off whom ever "complained" then park it behind the house.
After that incident I decided to go flying and enjoy the sunset and harvest moon rise.

Today I got a better start and got the black paint on the throttles and trim handle. I will just let these dry naturally . Here they are all painted.

  With the really hot dry weather, I decided to go ahead with the covering on the lower door. It has had 6 days to dry now so the Poly Tack should not effect the epoxy primer. I got one side glued on and it got too hot to work. I went out after dinner and finished attaching the fabric. Here it is ready for final shrinking.

I should be able to get the Poly Brush and tapes on tomorrow. Might as well finish this while I have this beautiful weather. Fall is just around the corner.

Lower door completed

I could not resist this morning and I had to trial fit the tail panels to see how they looked. I think they will look fine for the "beater" Cub. Here is the right side.

After basking in the glory of completion for a few minutes I got to work finishing the lower door. All that remained was to weld together the rods that actuate the latching pins. I had a couple pieces of the 1/8     4130 rod left over to practice on and it became clear that the assembly had to be carefully supported or it would bend when hot enough to weld. Rather than weld I decided to try to wrap the two rods together with wire and solder them. I just could not get the solder to flow and , I think the rods just soaked out too much heat.
I killed an hour on this, then just went with plan "A" to weld with careful jigging and heat management. Since my welding skills are sub par I practiced on some nails until I could stick them together.

Not very pretty , but they are stuck together. I then used a piece of scrap metal to protect the door handle, wet rags the cover the other painted areas and then stainless steel tape to protect the rags. It all worked good with just a little burning of the primer.

I did make the mistake of using a Cleco clamp as a heat sink on one end,  it just could not take the heat.

It's not the most beautiful weld but I think it is good enough for this application. After this picture I carefully bead blasted the weld and the damaged primer areas. It is ready for some touch up primer tomorrow and the door will be ready for cover.

With the door finished, I then worked on the right rear window and fitted the refinished trim strip. It came out pretty nice.

Here is the lower door all fitted to the airplane. The new latching mechanism works really good. It was worth the work.

The rest of the evening was spent flying, it was super nice with the moon rising and the sun setting, Sweet!

Tail completed

Today I officially completed the tail (I think) . Every one of the cover plates I made for the tail had some amount of red on them. This morning I installed each one and taped them off for painting. I also installed the stencils I got from Univair on the Hub caps and I mask off the door to paint the hinges. The rest of the door is covered with fabric but I realized last night that the hinges needed to be painted before covering. Here they are all taped up ready for paint.

Here are the hub caps with the Univair precut stencils.

Here they are after spraying with Red paint.

Here are the door hinges painted.

The tail panels came out OK with just a little trash and some minor bleed through at the tip of the points.

The hub caps did not come out very good, the stencil was not compatible with the slow drying paint I used. It really needed a fast dry paint to minimize bleed under. They will look OK from 15 ft.

It's better than I could do freehand but not what I expected for the cost of the stencils. I also painted the fuel shutoff knob since I had the paint.

I had a little set back on the black items I painted the other day. The regular enamel paint I usually bake on in the oven. However when I heated the trim handle the paint bubbled up and ruined the finish. I guess the cast pot metal they used to make this is porous , it was fine until I heated it.

So do you think Stits wants to get rid of the Randolph Enamel paint line. Hows this label for salesmanship ??

That's it for today , slow but steady progress. Did you miss BC, he was back with the penguins !

Delayed by the Chinamen

Delayed again by my cheap Chinese tools. I have to be fair though, I have been using the piss out of this $90 dollar paint shaker. It does not have a Hobbs meter, however I have put at least a pint of oil through it at one drop every 18 seconds.

There really is not much to it, but I'm not sure I really understand the pneumatic sequencing of this thing during operation. I went in and changed the "O" ring on the piston and it worked for the day. Now, do I go buy 4 more of these or do you buy the American made unit for $400 ? Oh well, after a stimulating intellectual morning of fixing the paint shaker , I got back to painting. Today was Black and White day. I painted all the panels Insignia White , I just used Stits Enamel one part paint for this. Here they are all finished , I will wait a day or two and then paint the red stripes.

I then painted a bunch of small parts black.

 

The rest of the day was spent cleaning the shop so I could get the fuselage back in. Today I will work some more on the boot cowling. I'm running out of other projects and can't put it off much longer. BC does not like the noise of the paint sprayer, so he slept inside all day, no picture today. It does not seem to bother his girl friend though, she never moves from this spot behind the shop.

Paint day

My pile of completed and unpainted parts had grown too large, so today was a marathon painting day. I started the day sandblasting the lower door and a few other steel parts. Of course the Harbor Freight pressure blaster gave up half way through and I had to make repairs. Have you ever taken one of these apart?

It is dirt simple, between the two end fittings is a length of flexible tubing and to cut off flow the tube is pinched closed by the handle lever. What happened to mine is the tubing took a "set" this allowed the passing sand/air mixture to abrade a hole in the tube.

Starting today I will store this with the handle lever depressed so the tubing is not under constant pressure. With that fixed I completed cleaning the lower door, control stick and cowl bracket.
They all came out pretty nice, the Hobby Air air supplied respirator makes sandblasting almost a pleasure.

The goal for the day was just to prime the steel parts but I had them ready for paint by noon, so I decided to paint the aluminum parts too. Each of them got an acid wash and a dip in the alodine tank, before being laid out for paint. Here they are ready for paint.

In the end I decided to hang the door, even if it blows around a little it is still easier to paint that way.

Here are the door locking pins I made this week. I hope that spider found a place to hide.

  Here is everything all ready for paint, I'm waiting for the epoxy primer to induct.

On all the panels and covers I painted the back/hidden side first, waited about half hour for the paint to go tack free then turned them over to paint the "good" side. Here they are after painting.

Tomorrow I will paint selected parts Black and White. The door will be allowed to dry a week and then I will start covering. Hopefully I can get this finished before it gets too cold. Right now the weather is perfect, hope it holds. The door will be the last of the fabric work. The red parts will have to wait for the boot cowl to be completed , I only have enough Red Aerothane left for one batch. My little town is completely overrun with people, so this will be a good weekend to hang out in the shop.(with my bud)