Making Forward progress..   March 14th, 2006

I’ve spent the past couple of days working on the left Horizontal Stabilizer. Since it is pretty much a repeat of the right one, I haven’t been taking pictures.

I am still waiting for the pop-rivet dimpler tool so I can dimple all of the holes in the skins….

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I’m Caught Up!!   March 2nd, 2006

As you’ve probably noticed, the entries in this blog do not necessarily correspond to the dates where the work described was actually performed.

As of today, I am current!

From now on, I will try to make entries as the work is performed.

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Enough of this cheap table!   February 20th, 2006

If you’ve been looking at the pictures on other postings, you’ll notice I’m using an eight-foot folding table as my work surface. I’m sick of it. It’s too low to the ground, to rickety, etc.

So, it’s time to build some real workbenches!

I downloaded the plans for the EAA 1000 standard worktable, and decided to make me a couple of them.

I ended up spending about $160, and got two ‘standard’ 2ftx5ft tables. I had enough material left over to do another two smaller tables (I did have to make a trip to HD for a few more 2X4’s).

Here’s a picture of the tables with the horizontal stabilizer skins sitting on them.

The plans for the tables call out ‘wood screws’. I bought the Zinc screws they sell at Home Depot in boxes of 50, and found out they are CRAP. Some of them are OK, but perhaps 20% of them had their head turn to mush when I screwed them in with my cordless drill. At first I thought I was maybe using too much force, or the wrong size screwdriver bit, but after trying on two or three different size bits, I got about the same results. The other 80% had no problems at all. Perhaps a woodworker out there can enlighten me?

Anyway, I think if I ever need to do this again, I’d buy the black ‘drywall’ screws. A lot cheaper, and I’ve never had a problem with screwing them in. Sure, the threads are a lot coarser, but the tables have so many screws it’s not going to matter.

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