omet Sailplane
Project
I have spent most of the day making a mandrel for
spraying the fuselage and a support fixture for spraying the top of the
stab. The fuselage mandrel is made out a 1/4" plywood plate that bolts to
the firewall through the motor mount blind nuts. To the plate is attached a
7/16" wooden dowel. The picture below shows the dowel jigged to the plywood
plate while the 15 minute epoxy sets up.
Because of the large bending moment that will be
put on the dowel/plate fixture when supporting the fuselage, four 1/8" lite
ply stiffeners were added in a cruciform pattern as shown below.
This picture shows the finished fuselage mandrel
bolted to the fuselage's firewall.
If you recall, in my last report I showed the
picture below of the stab mounted upside down on a support fixture for
spraying the edges and the bottom of the stab.
Today I made a second stab support fixture for
painting the top of the stab. 1/8" X 3" balsa sheet was used to make two
supports that plug into the stab's sub fin slots on the bottom of the stab
out near the tips. These two supports were glued to a piece of 1" X 4" pine
and braced with two braces as shown below.
This picture shows the stab mounted right side up
on the finished support fixture.
Tomorrow, I spray the satin clear Klass Kote on
all of the Sailplane's components except for the wing. I still have not
figured exactly out how to support wing yet so I will have to work on that
some more..............................Tandy