Merry Christmas to all!

Taking a break from building to enjoy the holidays with my family. Merry Christmas to all and to all happy CX4 building!  Hope Santa brings your goodies. And a Happy New Year!

Greg.

Spar Ends - Three more hours

Finished shaping and smoothing spar end pieces today.  The 1/4" pieces for the wing spars are primed and drying.  Here is a picture of the first one I finished.

1/4" Spar end finished with self etching primer

After cutting the pieces out, I hand filed them, then a couple of minutes on the bench grinder wire brush and finally hand sanded with 220 grit to a smooth finish.  Cleaned with mineral spirits and then painted one coat of self etching primer.  The final piece looks pretty impressive.  Looks like a machined piece. Eight more to go for the 1/8" spar ends that go on the center spar.  That will be tomorrow's task.  Although I'll probably be back in the garage/workshop this evening.  I wanted to keep dust down while the primer sets on the pieces I sprayed today.

Thanks for checking in!

Spar End Fabrication - 4Hrs

Cutting, grinding, filing, and wire wheel polished half of the spar end pieces today.  Wow, that 4130 chrome alloy steel is H A R D! stuff.  Went through four jigsaw blades cutting the 1/8" material.  Following the plans I needed to cut off 1/4" of material from the end to 2" from the other end to allow for the spar ends in the spar angles.  I set up the parts to show the way it will fit together:

So here is what 4hours of work looks like:

Very satisfied with progress today.  It was quite rewarding to take the raw metal from bar to finished shaped part.  So these are officially the first real aircraft parts that I have made!  

I will cut the spar webs tomorrow hopefully.  Need to get some help unrolling the .040 Sheet to do that.  Also will need to clear off the work bench to do that.  Sheet is 12' long.  And I need to cut two lengths of 93 1/2" and one 35" by 7" pieces for those parts.

Stay tuned!