Congratulations to all of you who have stuck with me so far. I feel like I'm moving into a new phase of the build, and 40 pages seemed like enough for the Part 3 thread. Welcome to Part 4 of my Marquart Charger build.
A quick review: I started building wing ribs in mid 2016, and was just about to start working on spars at the end of 2018, when my domestic situation changed, and I had to move, taking me away from the shop I'd put together. I spent about a year unable to make any progress on the build because everything was in storage, and finally restarted in April 2020, when I got my new shop in serviceable shape at the start of the COVID lockdown. Since then, I've made excellent progress (lockdown is good for something), having made wedge blocks (so many wedge blocks), welded all the wing brackets, and gotten them almost all coated. All the externally-protruding brackets were powder coated to a color something like Stewart Systems' Smoke Grey color, which is what I'll be using on the rest of the frame. Internal-only brackets have been primed, and will be painted Any Day Now.
As Part 3 was wrapping up, I was putting the final bevels on the wing spars, and last night I did the final bevel cuts on the aileron spars, marking the last time I expect to use my Very Long Fence table saw setup for a while.
Now, I move into the new phase that I'll probably be in for a few years: building wing panels.
And with the new phase come new questions.
Generally, I see the following tasks, in approximately this order, remaining before I actually start threading ribs onto spars and assembling all my pieces into wings:
The relevant plans sections:
http://marquartcharger.org/plans/Sheet 05 - Wing Spars.pdf
http://marquartcharger.org/plans/Sheet 02 - Upper Wing Assembly.pdf
http://marquartcharger.org/plans/Sheet 03 - Lower Wing Assembly.pdf
A quick review: I started building wing ribs in mid 2016, and was just about to start working on spars at the end of 2018, when my domestic situation changed, and I had to move, taking me away from the shop I'd put together. I spent about a year unable to make any progress on the build because everything was in storage, and finally restarted in April 2020, when I got my new shop in serviceable shape at the start of the COVID lockdown. Since then, I've made excellent progress (lockdown is good for something), having made wedge blocks (so many wedge blocks), welded all the wing brackets, and gotten them almost all coated. All the externally-protruding brackets were powder coated to a color something like Stewart Systems' Smoke Grey color, which is what I'll be using on the rest of the frame. Internal-only brackets have been primed, and will be painted Any Day Now.
As Part 3 was wrapping up, I was putting the final bevels on the wing spars, and last night I did the final bevel cuts on the aileron spars, marking the last time I expect to use my Very Long Fence table saw setup for a while.
Now, I move into the new phase that I'll probably be in for a few years: building wing panels.
And with the new phase come new questions.
Generally, I see the following tasks, in approximately this order, remaining before I actually start threading ribs onto spars and assembling all my pieces into wings:
- Draw center lines on all spars
- Cut tapered ends of spars
- Cut spars to final length
- Mark locations of ribs, compression tubes, etc. on spars
- Build, set up, and level spar support jigs for the table (and build an extension table so it's 12' long instead of 8')
The relevant plans sections:
http://marquartcharger.org/plans/Sheet 05 - Wing Spars.pdf
http://marquartcharger.org/plans/Sheet 02 - Upper Wing Assembly.pdf
http://marquartcharger.org/plans/Sheet 03 - Lower Wing Assembly.pdf
