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Building Tips and technical articles. => Building techniques => Topic started by: Jim Pollock on July 15, 2007, 08:58:10 PM

Title: Slick Way?
Post by: Jim Pollock on July 15, 2007, 08:58:10 PM
Good Evening Sparky's Gang.......

My question here is simply.......Does anyone have a slick, cool - errr, easy way of jigging up D tube wings?

I'm working on my Akromaster and doing it how I did it in my attic in '70, but there must be easier ways!

Jim Pollock   HB~> H^^
Title: Re: Slick Way?
Post by: Ralph Wenzel (d) on July 16, 2007, 07:07:39 PM
With only a few small changes, Tom Morris' New Milleniom construction does a great job with D-tube winds. It requires changing the LE and TE setup, but that's relatively simple.

Of course, the Adjust-O-Jig works just fine, too, once you drill the holes in the ribs.

Title: Re: Slick Way?
Post by: Warren Wagner on July 16, 2007, 08:12:25 PM
Good Evening Sparky's Gang.......

My question here is simply.......Does anyone have a slick, cool - errr, easy way of jigging up D tube wings?

I'm working on my Akromaster and doing it how I did it in my attic in '70, but there must be easier ways!

Jim Pollock   HB~> H^^

Jim, 

I'll give you a method that is slick, cool, and an easy way to build a D tube wing, if you promise one thing....that you will post lots of construction photos for us to admire !!

The Morris system is, of course, a very well accepted way of doing it, but here's a system that I like, with jig blocks you can easily make.   A table saw is nice, but you can also get accurate jig blocks if carefully cut on a bandsaw.  In any case, you must clamp the clamps together, and disk sand to make them identical in heigth.   Then the blocks are lightly CAed to a flat glass surface.

This photo depicts a Fancher "Imitation" wing in progress.  Someone is bound to spot the tab on the bottom of the near rib, and question why I didn't use the tabs.  The simple answer is, that the tabs don't help any when the wing is flipped over to do the opposite side.

Note that the LE blocks are individual, the TE block is one piece.   That was just an experiment, and  the one piece jig did not offer any advantage, and did have a couple of draw backs.  I prefer the individual blocks.

I happen to use stock 1" x 2" pine, as it was dimensionally consistant, and readily available.  Other materials are fine, including hard balsa.

I also made this type of jig block that corresponds to a square leading edge that is rotated 45 degrees horizonally, like a Twister LE.

Even if you don't use this type of jig block system, we still want to see the construction photos !!

Cheers.

Warren Wagner
Title: Re: Slick Way?
Post by: Ralph Wenzel (d) on July 16, 2007, 08:47:30 PM
That's pretty slick, Warren. Bet I could make those jig blocks on my router table, too. Now all I have to do is create a path to the router table in the garage . . .

Title: Re: Slick Way?
Post by: Dennis Adamisin on July 17, 2007, 04:22:42 PM
Built my last Eclipse D-tube pretty much how Warren described except lower tech.  I tack-glued 1/4 x 1 x 1.5 tall "feet" onto the LE and TE with the top of the feet aligned to a centerline drawn before hand.  Completed top side of wing, then inverted, removed and reinstall the feet and did the bottom, including installing the wing-mounted gear.  LE was capped and the TE finished up clean too.