Chapter 14

We are building again after a nine month break. I changed jobs, which required us to move. I must now split my time in half. I must remodel the house for my wife and still put some hours into the plane. My new workshop is in the basement of our house. It is a walk out basement, so we get natural light to work by.

Here you can see my faithful helper. We started on chapter 14. In this chapter we build the center section spar. This is the main beam running through the plane. The wings will bolt on to the spar.

We built our jig out of MDF purchased from the local building supply store. We built the jig in a couple evenings. We used dry wall screws to hold the jig together and to the table.

I am lucky my wife and son love to help me.

I saw this idea on another web site. I used shims clamped to the table at the correct height to sand the foam ends. This gave us an easy way to keep from sanding too much material away.

I use anything we can find to weigh down the foam as the epoxy dries.

I made a tool to sand the troughs for the spar cap lay-up. This made it very easy to get the trough square.

I installed the hard points which will later be drilled for the wing attach bolts. I installed fiberglass to make the shear web. After the shear web cured I installed plywood forms to create a trough, then installed uni strands in the trough. This will be the upper and lower spar. Layers of fiberglass cover the whole beam for strength and protection.

Here you can see the center section spar set in place. Mariclair and Alex still wonder if it is really a plane.

Created April 10, 2004