Well, my new roll of carbon fiber fabric (5.5 oz structural stuff) came today. Finally found a supplier that doesn't wear a mask and hold a gun when selling it to you. I've been working on anew mold for a carbon fiber bellcrank and am pretty happy with it overall. It's based on Denny Adamisin's old self-neutralizing design. Sort of. Anyway, I laid up the first one tonight. We'll see what I have tomorrow.
One of the things I find fun with this stuff is making your own parts, like bellcranks and such. I take the same view I do when working on my car. A lot of stuff I do myself. some stuff in a pain in the backside and so I let a mechanic do it (I just paid a mechanic to install a gas gauge sender unit in my car - you have to drop the tank to do it and it just wasn't worth it to me. Hey, for a $100 (less the cost of the part - about $55) it was well worth it to let him install it instead of spending a pile of time and skinned knuckles on it)., I usually make my own bellcranks, mold various parts like cowlings and such, make my own fuel tanks and so forth. I buy control horns because, though I can make them, I don't enjoy it much. Sometimes is a matter of cost. It's not worth it to me to pay someone $30 or $40 bucks for a part that I can punch out in an evening. Other times it's a matter of effort or complication level. I'm not a good enough machinist, for instance, to build my own engine form scratch. I can follow directions, but my mill has too much runout to make it practical and I don't really have the needed skill level (though I think it would be a blast).
Some things you do at least once so you learn how, but it may not be worth it all the time. I have made my own venturis (venturii?). But it's kind of a pain and I'd rather pay someone else to do it. same with other stuff. If I ever get the tooling for my lathe, I'd like to try making my own spinner, but I already know it's not something I'd want to do all the time. Same with other stuff.
What standard parts do you like to make yourself?