Warbird Information Exchange

As always Gary, thanks for your time....

Lynn

If you could just get them to add the rivet gun to the percussion section,...

Well, since I'm closed down for a few hours, I thought I'd go ahead and zap y'all another quick update. First of all, it's been tough to keep my mind on work so far today since I read the news about fellow WIXer, Jack Cook, and the loss of some of his pets, his house, and other belongings in a devastating fire yesterday. I'm sure that Jack already knows how much everyone here wishes him and his family the best in this difficult time.

So anyway, my original plan was to get the second tailgunner's door mostly built by the time we had our "quiet time" for the Symphony rehearsal in the hangar today. As usual, I didn't get as far along as I'd hoped.

What I did get done is as follows...

First, I finished drilling and tapping all of the attaching holes for the door rollers. After that, I just went over to the pile of our corrugated material and picked out a sheet to start with........




As you can tell from that picture, the material tends to "relax" in a rolled up form. In order to make it easier to work with, I just leaned on it a little the opposite direction and got it to lay down for me........




Then I did some measuring and drew a line to where the first cut should be. I then used the die grinder to make the cuts necessary. Our bandsaw is junk and doesn't make cuts smooth enough for my liking on this type of project, and since my little saw blade that I normally use on the die grinder is now dull, I went back to the ol' carbide cutoff wheel......




Then I smoothed the high spots with the sanding disc.......




After that, I got my fish hook remover out and.............okay...it's not really a fish hook remover, but sort of resembles one. This is an edge deburring tool. Pretty straight forward how it works...and it works well, by making the edges of the metal ever so slightly rounded off.......






When measuring the line that goes across the corrugations, it's a little trickier. Nothing horrible, but it's sometime troublesome to get a straight line and then cut it........








Every now and then, the cut off wheel will bind up. That's where some Boelube will save the day. This is a lubricant for drills, cut off tools, etc. and works wonderfully........




And here it is post cutting. Notice that I just used the shot bag that's normally used for forming metal. The weight of it keeps everything still while the cutting is taking place......




Smoothing the edges on the corrugated sections takes a little more patience.......




Once the piece was cut to size, then it was time to mark and drill the locations for the holes where the rollers will be attached.......






Now that the corrugated piece is done, I needed to press on and fabricate the flat sheet. Simple stuff here, really. Take a large sheet and make it a smaller sheet........








Once it was cut to size, I put it in place on the corrugated skin (underneath in this photo), and transferred the holes from the corrugated skin to the flat sheet and clecoed it into place.......




Then, it was time for me to shut down for the rehearsal. Here's what that looks like......






So now that I had time to kill, I decided to help Mark with a little project he had going on this morning. Last night's winds here in Midland blew over one of the semi-truck trailers that he uses to store chairs for these events. Well, when the trailer was empty of it's chairs, it was apparently light enough for the winds to take over......and over it went..........




Personally, I just think Mark will just go to any length to keep from having to sweep the trailer floor ..........




Working with Mark can be fun sometimes, but challenging as well. I'm more the "high strung" type, while he's a little more "laid back." Our plan was for him to start picking the trailer up with the forklift and for me to pull it the rest of the way over with the truck. The problem is that he didn't give me time to get to the truck before he started lifting. It started looking to me as if he was about to go too far and Whamo! But he stopped in time and we got a good laugh out of it..........




So anyway, we managed to get the job done with no injuries or collateral damage (believe it or not).........








So that's it for this update. Sorry this one is so dang boring and not all that entertaining, but that's just how today has gone so far.

Gary

Gary,
In your post, you've mentioned that you've cut the rollers off of the bomb bay doors. Do you have new rollers for the doors to use in the future when the day comes that those doors are installed? Just curious...

_________________
"Everyone wants to live here (New Jersey), evidenced by the fact that it has the highest population per capita in the U.S..."

Good question. Those rollers and what I've done to them have caused me a few sleepless nights. But here's the answer to your question......

I don't currently have any new rollers. However, I have removed two untouched roller assemblies and put them aside so that they can be duplicated and new ones be made from them. I have also cut all of the old rollers I need for now, so there are plenty of other untouched rollers that still remain attached to the bomb doors.

There were several that were broken to begin with, so my theory was/is that if we had to get several made anyway, we might as well have a whole batch made. Once they are programmed into a CAD or similar computer program, the only extra cost is the extra material it will take to make more. Make sense?

Gary

Got it. Thanks!

_________________
"Everyone wants to live here (New Jersey), evidenced by the fact that it has the highest population per capita in the U.S..."

Your getting there Gary slowly but surely. Is it too early to remind you of the pics you are oging to send?

_________________
Cheers,
Peter

________

Dang, already forgot about them. Sorry.

Zap me an e-mail as a reminder please.

Gary

Well, by some stroke of luck, I was actually able to get the L/H tailgunner's door dang near finished today! I only have the two end pieces to fabricate and install, which I'll do tomorrow. Here's how it went once the Symphony's rehearsal was overwith (from roughly 1 p.m. until 5 p.m.)........

With the outer skin clecoed in place, I marked and drilled the holes for the #4 rivets which will hold the skin onto the corrugated material and then clecoed those holes to insure proper fit.......






Then I just started riveting the two pieces together........




After that step was completed, I cut out the two sections of hinge material for each end of the door and installed them to the outer skin (forgot to take pictures of the installation process ).......






That pretty much completed the door fabrication for now. The next step was to modify the rollers by narrowing the width of the roller itself. Someday, I'd like to redesign these altogether and have a machine shop make a real part for this job, but for now this will have to work......




One piece that I didn't show y'all on the previous door was the spacer that I had to make that goes between the corrugations and the rollers. I simply got a piece of brass round stock, cut the proper thickness off the side of it, and then cut that piece into smaller, individual pieces. After that, I had to drill a hole in the center of each one for the attaching screw to go through. It took me several prototypes of this spacer on the other door before I got it right, but this version ended up working quite well........




This is how the roller assembly looks installed on the doors. I think it's obvious that I'm not done with the clean-up of the rollers, and will get that taken care of soon. But I needed to get these installed temporarily to insure the door works as advertised. The way I install the door is by installing the lower rollers first, then sliding the door into position on the tracks. I then install the upper rollers, one by one, to secure the door in place........




And here's what it looks like.........








The only bad part about this new door is that it works better than the other one. I'll try to get that glitch worked out tomorrow as well. So until then, y'all have a nice evening.

Gary

Gary,
To those of us unitiated in the art of warbird restoration, ALL of this is fascinating. Thanks so much for providing an inside look into how much work it actually takes to get this Lib back to bomber config. I only wish I were close enough to help out...

Cheers,
Todd

Me too!

I officially have four weeks to get this airplane ready for it's unveiling on May 12. There's a slight possibility that I may start getting just a tiny bit stressed in the upcoming days and weeks, so y'all hang on!

Gary

Tell you what though I wouldnt want to be a rear gunner on that plane though talk about hanging out in the open unprotected!!

_________________
Cheers,
Peter

________

Pssst... I think Gary is going to have some good news about the rear gun position shortly, based on what I saw this morning.

Over across the street in our High Sky Wing hangar, we continue to cover the rudders and elevators. Frankly, the rudders are not fun, with all the curves and other "features". Hopefully the elevators, which are much more straight, will go faster. Once we get the fabric on and tight, then we'll spray the final sealer/primer, etc. More later.

Randy

It's done.........








Here's what the original looked like.......






Now, I realize that I've got several little detail items to finish up on the tailgunner's doors, but if the airplane had to fly today, these doors could go with it and wouldn't keep it from flying. The tail cone of this airplane was the second thing I took off when this project started back in October, so it's nice to know that the fabrication and loosing sleep part of this little project within a project is finished.

Other work going on today was done by Kirk and James...putting the cowlings on...........






All four engines are now cowled up. I'll start shooting paint on them tomorrow morning...maybe even tonight, after the prep is finished......




Gary

Quick question though, what are the two circles where the doors meet in the first pic? Lights or something? They look like the are mounted on a vertical frame between the two doors?

_________________
Cheers,
Peter

________