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Nice !
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Chimney Sweep Beating Metal into submission since 1990
Fav qoute ch?y tr?n ho?c gi?t t?t c? và d?t hooches c?a h? |
Right back at ya!
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ADHD update: built a deck frame and railing for my office. Framed it up like a truck flatbed, going to build the deck surface from shiplap apitong hardwood trailer decking. Haven't decided how I'm going to paint (or blacken?) the metalwork yet, so it still has to get blown apart before final assembly. Next step is to teach myself to build a steel stringer staircase, and to build a scroll bender so that I can make ornamental ironwork for the staircase railing (since I ran out of container wall scraps and can't carry that theme into the rest of the railings.)
Passed my Private pilot checkride back in November after a whole bunch of weather and maintenance setbacks forced the examiner and I to reschedule the ride four or five times. I've been trying to fly every 7-10 days since that time to maintain proficiency, or at least let it not atrophy as fast as it otherwise might. Took my girl on a night flight down to Holman Field in St. Paul a couple weeks ago and got dinner at the on-airport restaurant. Good practice talking to air traffic control and getting cleared into the Minneapolis/St. Paul bravo airspace. The restaurant is neat, too... you taxi right up to the restaurant apron and walk in the back door while all the diners gawk through the big runway-facing picture windows. Trying to take as many cross-country (50+ nautical mile) flights as possible; I need to have logged 50 hours cross country as pilot in command before I'm eligible for an Instrument rating checkride, and I had an impacted ass full of the 25nm radius surrounding my home airport during training. Currently starting to familiarize myself with IFR via free resources on YouTube and elsewhere - I want to come into ground school having a good familiarity with the curriculum, power through it, and get my written exam out of the way. After I pass that, I have two years to meet all the rest of the criteria, actually learn how to fly IFR, and pass the checkride. If I don't earn another rating within two years of my Private, I'll need to do a flight review with an instructor to maintain my legal currency. Probably go do a weekend float plane class or something if I'm too dumb to pass Instrument in that timeframe. |
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Been pretty swamped with actual farm work, grounds & facilities maintenance, fleet repairs, etc. Snow removal has been a massive time sink this year, barely leaving me with the time required to bore expensive holes in the sky or build needlessly elaborate junk out of steel.
Here's the office stairs. I've never designed or built a staircase before, much less a steel stringer one with a bend in the middle. Real head scratcher, and kinda tricky to assemble without a helper. I think I got it licked. Gotta build some tie-ins to mount the staircase to the container and deck frame, and fabricate some support legs under the first landing. I'll probably make them look like riveted bridge girders so they match the stilts under the second story of the office. Railings, too... maybe ornamental scroll work, which means I'll have to build a scroll bender. We'll see. |
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"When you need it and ain't got it, you're singin' a different tune..."
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Hah! You can see on the staircase drawing, I reduced the dimensions to the nearest sixteenth. Not really hip to the intricacies of my CAD software, I bet there's a way to make it express dimensions that way all on its own.
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This is a cool thread, glad I stumbled onto it.
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I'm down between Hastings and Red Wing.
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Gotcha. I'm a little west of St. Cloud.
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Looking at and understanding 3d objects on 2d prints is likely to improve your spatial orientation and visualization during instrument flying, especially if all you have are the 2d representations without trimetric or similar views.
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Keep your powder dry, and watch your back trail.
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Right, I hope so. I'm able to conceptualize an object in 3D, kind of unfold it in my head, and then draw it in 2D CAD before reassembling it in 3D with my hands. I think my spatial reasoning skills are above average, but I'm completely ready to be humbled by instrument flying.
Right now, I'm trying to learn as much theory as possible by watching all the free resources on Youtube like the Pilot Edge and Flight Insight workshops and Fly8MA's content. I want to have a deeper understanding than rote memorization, but I do want to knock out the written before I get in the plane with a CFII. So far, I'm feeling pretty comfortable interpreting the symbolism on plates and en route charts, but I know it's a whole different ball game reviewing them in my office chair, versus briefing them inside a cloud at 120+ knots. I have dabbled with some basics in the desktop simulator, like flying ILSs and DME arcs and practicing hold entries, but I don't want to get too far ahead of myself and instill bad habits until I've had some proper instruction. I think passing the written exam and starting the 24-month clock (before the written test results expire) is a good place to begin. It's always difficult to motivate myself without any real consequences - I know the training is going to make me a better, safer pilot, but I'm not on a career path and I can already go take a 172 sightseeing on any day with pleasant weather. Giving myself a deadline should help me achieve the goal. |
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Originally Posted By ColinDoyle: Been pretty swamped with actual farm work, grounds & facilities maintenance, fleet repairs, etc. Snow removal has been a massive time sink this year, barely leaving me with the time required to bore expensive holes in the sky or build needlessly elaborate junk out of steel. Here's the office stairs. I've never designed or built a staircase before, much less a steel stringer one with a bend in the middle. Real head scratcher, and kinda tricky to assemble without a helper. I think I got it licked. Gotta build some tie-ins to mount the staircase to the container and deck frame, and fabricate some support legs under the first landing. I'll probably make them look like riveted bridge girders so they match the stilts under the second story of the office. Railings, too... maybe ornamental scroll work, which means I'll have to build a scroll bender. We'll see. View Quote get a kit plane!?!!? zenith series can be cheap? rube goldberg much?! lolz my brother in law had a fun name for that, 3rd arm type contraption. you get a lot more satisfaction doin it aaaaaaaaaallllllllll yourself, and youre not yelling at some booger picking moron to hold it vertical |
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Hah yeah... I'm too far along in life to take a couple years off work and go back to school to become an A&P mechanic, so an experimental is probably about the only way I'll be able to afford aircraft ownership. I'd love to build an RV-15, but I already have about 300 years of projects lined up.
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Bad ass thread and awesome work!
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Don't build an airplane in order to get an airplane, especially if you believe it will be low cost. Build an airplane because you want to build an airplane.
The landscape is littered with unfinished projects started by the first group. |
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Keep your powder dry, and watch your back trail.
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Definitely.
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Originally Posted By ColinDoyle: Hah! You can see on the staircase drawing, I reduced the dimensions to the nearest sixteenth. Not really hip to the intricacies of my CAD software, I bet there's a way to make it express dimensions that way all on its own. View Quote I used to be pretty sharp with AutoCAD, but I don't get to use it much any more. This probably won't be much help, but here's the basic steps that I was taught 20+ years ago to tweak dimension display styles: click Dimension tab; click Dimension Style down towards the bottom; click on the style you are using under "Styles"; click Modify; click the Primary Units tab; adjust the Precision to whatever decimal place you want. Hopefully that helps ya the next time around. If not, just build everything to the thousandth and rock on! |
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"When you need it and ain't got it, you're singin' a different tune..."
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Love your work my man!!!
I like working with metal…….built a couple bridges out of it Some tables Lots of stuff at work. I saw your plates with slots in them and smiled…….I hate making slots!! |
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Easy-peasy with the vintage Strippit Sonic 15 turret punch!
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Originally Posted By ColinDoyle: Easy-peasy with the vintage Strippit Sonic 15 turret punch! View Quote Is that the same as a drill press, hole saw and a grinder? Scored a job setting some steel tubes and related stuff I had to make 4” long 7/8” wide slots for knife plates for the tops of the tubes where they tied to the structure. |
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I remember those days. I finally got fed up and used my truck as collateral against a loan from the credit union so I could buy a bunch of metalworking tools. Zero regrets.
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Lookin Dam good !
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Chimney Sweep Beating Metal into submission since 1990
Fav qoute ch?y tr?n ho?c gi?t t?t c? và d?t hooches c?a h? |
That's a nice scroll/bending plate.
I have a cheap one somewhere, not sure why I bought it at the time, I don't really like scroll work, but I appreciate the trouble someone would go to do it. |
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Scrollwork has its place, but it's easy to overdo it. Just like dimpled holes, which I tend to put on everything.
Scroll bending will resume this weekend; I got another 200ft of flat yesterday afternoon. Taking today off to focus on studying for my Instrument rating written exam, which I scheduled tomorrow at KROS. Gonna scoot over there in the Cessna 182RG and hopefully crush the exam. Feeling reasonably confident with the Sheppard Air test prep program. |
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Originally Posted By ColinDoyle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuGkASmEqCE Not perfect, but I'm pleased with it. View Quote Do you have a cheat sheet? Bearing A in hole 23, bearing B in hole 26. Or you just make X number of pieces all at the same time and that's it? |
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I made one assembly that flowed pretty well, duplicated it about 50 times, and then placed it in all types of orientations to fill the majority of the space, and added some spare twists to fill the spaces in between and tie everything together.
It would have been a lot more difficult if I had tried to lay out everything geometrically and create a repeating pattern. Chaotic fill was pretty easy. |
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Just realized you were asking about the bender. I found that I could complete a small scroll with the stem bearing in the wider position, but it contoured the die a lot better if I left it one hole tighter for the initial tight radius. Sometimes using the wider bearing position it would run so wide around that first bend, I wasn't able to fit the outer shell of the die around that part. No cheat sheet or anything, I just assembly-lined most of the pieces. Everything starts with the smallest, tightest-radius bend so it made sense to start there and come back to hit some of the parts with the wider radius bends as necessary.
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Hey, if no one bothered to fix the old shit spreaders, we'd all be in trouble when it piled up.
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"When you need it and ain't got it, you're singin' a different tune..."
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Going back to the connex boxes, you just welded a steel door frame into it? I found a kit for $1500 with a steel door, but I didn’t know if I could get away with cheaper for an exterior rain tight opening.
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