Warbird Information Exchange

Matt, no offense intended to you directly about the Regional Jets, just a general comment. But I'm sure the seats up front are more comfortable than the ones in the back, huh?

Fairfax Ghost, welcome to WIX and thank you for your comments and picture. If I recall, the airplane shown is the XB-24 (first one flown). However, you're right about the windows and the top gunner's hatch. Due to the location of our control cables, I was not able to install either of those very top windows, but that is in the plans for the future.

Gary

Well some forward progress was made today. However, I'm about ready to head to the house, so I'll get y'all a photo update in the morning.

Gary

How nice to see Al Blue has come on board. It is almost like having the Pope come by and bless your efforts.

On my way here to my new location, I stopped by Werribee Australia and looked at where they are up to with their B24M.

It too is starting to look like an airplane again, still a way to go but the intent is to get the airplane to taxy stage. Never to fly I am sorry, one of the guys working on it is a guy called Ed Crabtree, last to fly this particulair airplane, and with a bit of luck he will taxy it again.

Been several years since I passed by before, and they are making great progress.

Gary this could be a source for a waste window have you tried them.

Regards

Col

_________________
Vietnam Vet and proud of it.

Well, thanks to everyone for your patience since the last "real" photo update on the Ol' 927 project. After a long wait, here is the latest news...

Scott was able to completely finish the radio operator's troop seats and get started on the forward bomb bay seating. Ellen, bless her heart, did anything she could to help. The problem is that I'm just essentially out of work to do for "unskilled laborers." She managed to stay busy with either helping Scott or doing little odds and ends jobs for us.

Daniel was able to finish the floorboards for the entry and PX areas. We still have to finish building the compartments for the forward PX storage, but at least the floors are done so that we can walk around without worrying about falling through it. Although the following pictures don't really give you a great veiw of them, you can get an idea of how much room we've been able to obtain under the floors for the PX items. Frankly, I think it's more than we had when we had those stinkin' bins in the bomb bays (back in the old Diamond Lil era).

Here's the floors with everything shut....




And here they are with the doors open...




While all of this was going on, I spent my time trying to start fabricating a right waistgunner's door. My intent was to duplicate it to the best of my ability, while also acknowledging that I had no time for intricate details. What I decided to do first was to make the outside skin for the door. And to save time (and material), I figured that the piece I cut out of the old fuselage plug that the factory put in to cover up the waistgunner's position would work quite well. So I laid the borrowed door that we have on top of the sheet I was going to use, and traced the window out on it...




However, what I saw was that the window cutout was going to be too close to just one existing rivet hole (R/H side of the line drawn)...




So, I just redrew my window cutout, slighty over to one side. It won't be exactly like the original, but don't tell anybody......




Once the cutout was in the spot I liked, I needed to find the center point of the corner radiuses so that I could use the holesaw to cut them out...










The next step was to simply cut down the straight lines and remove the center piece...






After that, I just took the flap wheel and deburred the edges with it, which pretty much completed that portion of the project...




While looking over the outside edges of the piece of aluminum I was using, I noticed that I had three rivet holes that had no edge distance whatsoever and couldn't possibly be used...




...So I decided to cheat a little. I slightly countersunk both sides of each hole and obtained some "S.O." rivets. These are rivets that are "soft" and haven't been through the heat treating process. They are essentially for projects just like this...to fill unwanted, or misdrilled holes. Once countersunk, I just banged the rivets into place and polished out the high spots that remained, which made for a nice edge that looks like it never had holes in it to begin with.......












Okay, that pretty much completes the outer piece of skin for the door for now. The next step for me was to attempt to duplicate the inside structure for the door. If I had a hydro-form press and a lot more time, I could make a mold and exactly duplicate the door we've borrowed. But since I don't have either, I needed to do what I could just from scratch.

I have intentions of doing this very much like I did the tailgunner's door tracks, in the fact that I will make my own angles and form and weld them together to make one piece. I got lucky and found one last sheet of 7075-0 material, which welds nicely (as far as aluminum goes). This is also a soft aluminum that is much easier to "move" than other heat treated materials...




But since we don't have a shear that's large enough, I have to manually cut out each individual strip for this project. The recessed portion of the borrowed waistgunner's door we have is 2" deep, so I'm going to make these strips 3" tall, so that 1" of that can be bent as an attaching flange. The straight line is my cutting point and the dashed line is the bending point...








Next, I just cut along the straight line and then did the rough deburring with a sanding disc...






The final deburring is done by hand, with a crazy little tool that looks like a bent fish hook remover. It's "V" shape on the end grabs any little remaining burrs, when pulled along the edge, and makes a nice, slightly tapered edge......






Now it was time to make the bend in the strip I just cut out. However, the angle in the borrowed door we have is not 90 degrees and not 45 degrees, and I would like to duplicate it as close as I can, if possible. So what I did was to get a "shape finder" that I got at an art supply store many years ago. This worked quite well in not only duplicating the angle needed, but it stays put so that you can use it as a reference when bending the new piece.......






So off to the sheet metal brake we go. Nothing special about this part of the project, particularly since we're working with soft aluminum. No real radius issues or cracking to worry about. Just line up the dashed line on the holder-downer-thinga-majiggy, clamp it down, and slowly start bending. Just remember, that you've got to stop before you bend it too far...






It's a good idea to remove the piece from the brake and see how your angle looks. From the looks of this, I need to go a little more........




There, now that looks more like it.......




So now that your piece of metal is at the right angly-of the-dangly, it's time to start using the sheet metal shrinker to make the corner. Its a good idea to make yourself some index marks before you start any shrinking, so that you can insure the piece goes back in the same spot as you check your progress...




Then start shrinking and checking, shrinking and checking........






As you get more and more radius in the piece, it'll start to move in places you don't like. Now, those guys that build steel gas tanks and stuff on those custom motorcycle shows are certainly talented, but steel has no "memory" to speak of and will more or less move wherever you put it, so it tends to be easier to work with. Aluminum, on the other hand, does have a "memory" and wants to go back to where it was (sort of). I kind of look at it like dealing with women. It's never really happy, but you just gotta keep trying and trying until you eventually convince it that it's happy. So, with that being said (and me surely getting in trouble), I needed to take the piece over to a nice, flat, round something-or-other and get that metal to lay down where I want it. My English Wheel has a little table of sorts off to the side for the shot bag to sit on. I noticed that when the shot bag was removed, I had the perfect place to do this work. I just laid the angle down on it and used the wooden slapper to stretch the unhappy part of the piece down to where it was happy again........




The problem now was that with duplicating the angle that the original door had, I was going to need to actually stretch the tall portion of the piece so that the shape would be symetrical all the way around. This is where it started going downhill. I started the stretching process, but it wasn't looking good.......




I tried to keep convincing it that it needed more stretching, but it finally just cracked.....




So, I just cut out the bad portion (so that the other pieces of material could be used) and threw away the piece that I couldn't make happy......






So, I tried another piece, this time not bending the initial angle as much in hopes that I could make this work.......




Nope. I can't make this one happy either. Man, this IS starting to sound like working with women. ..............








So, after soaking in the reality of me not having enough time to actually do this the way I wanted, I decided to lower my standards a bit and just do it the easy way. I bent the next angle at 90 degrees and started shrinking it around the corner. It'll be plenty strong, but just won't look like the original door. Deadlines suck. ..........










Even with the 90 degree bend, the aluminum still tries to "remember" where it was originally was. So, I had to use the slapper on it as well to lay it down, but this time, it all worked out well...








Now that I had one corner done, it was time to do the same thing three more times. I kind of screwed up with a measurement and made the one end short. However, that won't be a big deal to fix.....




So there you have it. That's as far as I've gotten on that project for now. I'm hoping to get a little more done on it today, but with the Memorial Day event going on in the hangar, I'm not sure how much I'll get done. I'll post more when I get more finished.

Gary

Looks great. I still don't get why the San Diego Air & Space Museum won't donate that door to your project. Are they building a B-24 piece by piece?

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

Gary, I appreciate you sharing your short-cut method of disposing of scrap aluminum from failed attempts at metal forming. I typically whip my scrap against the wall first, stomp on it repeatedly, and verbally condemn the entire project to an eternity of God's wrath before disposal. I now see I've been wasting valuable time and energy in doing so.

Thanks again for another helpful hint.

Dan

_________________
It was a good idea, it just didn't work.

Trust me, Dan. The "verbal condemning" certainly took place. I did take the stomping process out though, as I had no idea how many pieces I'd end up scrapping, so I didn't want to get all tired out too soon.

Gary

My scrap pile is bigger than your scrap pile...

_________________
Check out our new website.
CAF SoCal Wing http://www.cafsocal.com/

Okay, work has continued on the fabrication of the right waistgunner's door, but I've got to tell you that this is certainly not going to be one of my more proud achievements during this reconfiguration. I simply don't have the time needed to make a "good looking" door. This one will work, and it's certainly not anything that will affect the airworthiness of the airplane, so I'm essentially forced into just doing what I can to make it look like a door. Definitely not happy with the quality of work done so far.

Anyway, the last update ended with me finishing the fabrication of the angles that will attach to the outer skin. The next step was to cleco the corner pieces in place so that I could cut and trim the straight pieces in their locations in between the corners. Now, one thing I had noticed since my angles were at 90 degree bends, versus the 45 or so degree bends like the original had, was that there was now no ledge to keep the door from just flopping right out of the airplane. So what I had to do was to just slide the corners outboard a bit, which put the angled pieces 1/4" to 1/2" past the outer skin. This would now keep the door inside the airplane. Once all of the corners were in place, and the fitting for the straight pieces was done, I clecoed them all on the skin...




I can't recall why now, but there must've been something that was giving me difficulty with the angles, so I directed my attention, briefly, to going ahead and marking the lines where the holes for the window retaining screws will be. Each of the four sides of the window cutout already had one existing hole that I was going to utilize, so I just measured it's distance to the edge, duplicated that on the ends, and drew my lines......










After that, I must've gotten whatever it was that had me distracted, out of my mind. So, I went ahead and marked my rivet spacing for the angles and drilled & clecoed them all into place......




Now, in the last update, I mentioned how aluminum tends to have a "memory." This is a good example of what I was talking about. This outer skin I'm using has been installed on this very airplane for over 65 years now. When Consolidated installed it (to plug up the waistgunner's position), it was not rolled in order to match the shape of the airplane, but was simply put on as a flat sheet and they laid it down as they riveted it on the fuselage, to form the contour of the airplane. Well, now that it's been removed, you can easily see that it's "remembered" that it was a straight piece and is back to it's original flat shape after all of these years...




Now, those angles I put on the outer skin will be what essentially holds that skin into shape, but I started thinking that I may have to roll the skin to help me out a bit. I decided to put the door up in the waistgunner's cutout on the fuselage to see just how much I was going to have to move things. It fit okay, but I had to put quite a bit of force on the door to get it to match even this much....






I took the entire assembly over to the pnuematic shrinker to start making the door the shape I wanted, but that outer skin just wasn't wanting to cooperate with me since it wanted to lie down flat..........






So, I made the decision to go ahead and roll the skin to match the contour of the fuselage. Naturally, the sheet metal roller that we have in our shop was just a few inches short (story of my life )......




So, I had to cheat. This is a good time to remember a quote from one of the best Warbird restorers of all time, "It's just a dumb piece of metal, make it do what YOU want IT to do." So that's what I did. I stuck one end of the outer skin in the sheet metal brake, just to hold it in place. I then just "leaned" on it a bit to make the shape I wanted. If I needed more bend towards the top, then I'd just curl the metal up and put more tension up there. If I needed it lower, then I'd just release some of that tension until I got down towards the bottom. When you don't have the proper equipment to do a job and you're by yourself, sometimes you just have to improvise. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I was pretty happy with how this piece turned out, as it all of a sudden made all of the difference in the world when the angles I shrunk were clecoed back to it.......










After a little bit more fine tuning with the shrinker and my angles, it even fit the fuselage fairly well......






So, at this point, the clecos started to be in my way. It was time to go ahead and rivet the angles to the skin. But before that, I needed to countersink all of the holes on the outer skin. Normally, to match the rest of the rivets on the airplane, I would've used button head rivets here. However, since the original waistgunner's door was spotwelded together, it was nice and smooth. So to duplicate that look as close as possible, the flush rivets were the way to go. The countersinking process is the same as I've described to you in detail before. There are quite a few rivet holes in this skin, so it took about thirty minutes or so to complete the countersinking process.......






Now, there were several of the original rivet holes that were either not of sufficient edge distance for this outer skin, or were simply in the way of my new angles. So, I needed to fill them in with more of those "S.O.", or soft, rivets. And naturally, after wasting valuable time in looking for the right size (-4) rivets, I came up empty handed. So, I improvised and found some long -3 rivets and made them work. That is one thing about these soft rivets, is that they are so mallable that they move around to pretty much whatever size or shape you want. In this case, since I'd already countersunk the outside of the hole to fit a -4 rivet, the -3 countersink wouldn't fit right. Sooooo, I just barely countersunk the inside of the hole (I got away with this since the skin is so thick, .063"), and just used the butt-tail of the rivet to fill in the countersink on the outside. The theory is that when all is said and done, and the tail of the rivet is polished down, it'll just look like the top of a normal countersunk -4 rivet. And when painted, you'll likely not see them at all.

While flush riveting by myself, I also like to do what they call "back riveting." I simply use a flat, steel plate, and place the flush rivet head on it. I then place the piece or pieces of metal being shot on top of the rivet, and actually shoot the tail of the rivet with the rivet gun. For these S.O. rivets, I'm using a flush rivet set to smash the tails flat, but later I'll explain another way of doing it as well......












Now that the hole fillin' was done and out of the way, it was time to rivet the angles on. I used the same back riveting method, with the only difference being that I changed out the rivet set in the rivet gun. I exchanged the flush set for a set made for shooting button head -4 rivets into place. The reason I do this is three-fold. One, is that it is "theoretically" better to have a rounded rivet tail than a sharp, squared off tail. Sharp corners will crack before rounded corners will. I can't say that I've ever actually seen this happen when shooting "normal" style rivets, but the theory is there anyway. Two, is that the round set helps keep your gun on the rivet the whole time it's being shot, rather than sliding off to one side and potentially ruining the rivet tail. Three, is that it just looks better (in my opinion). Now, I see that I didn't actually take any pictures of me using the round head rivet set this time, but I'll make sure I do next time. Here's where I'm at with the door right now........






So now it's time to get back out there and do more fabricating. I'll likely start on some structure for the inboard portion of the door next (kind of around the window area). I'll be sure to post an update later.

Gary

Any date yet on her first flight? She will look great flying along with witchcraft

_________________
Cheers,
Peter

________

Nope.

Gary ~ great pictures and amazing workmanship yet again !

Sitting as I do in an office all day I am constantly impressed by the skill and ingenuity you demonstrate with every challenge you face.

Thanks for taking the time to share

_________________
Blue Skies .....

Peter

Consolidated by US state ~ see if there's a heavy bomber tour stop coming to an airport near you ...... http://www.bomberflight.info

Warbirdapps on facebook ~ every day a new image from my personal journey thru the world of warbirds ..... https://www.facebook.com/Warbirdapps

Gary, that one piece of skin has had more lives in it than ol' Mosquito himself..... Your powers of "Austinizing" never cease to wonder and amaze!!!!!!!!!! Keep on rocking bro'! Oh, and, thanks for the update.... How much you wanna bet, that by the time you are finished with that right side hatch....... some of the old timers will say...... "Yeah, thats just how they looked sixty years ago!" Alan

_________________
Just call me Al.

I have seen some of the best in aircraft metal workers in my time. But your efforts display a great effort, and show true professional approach.

It is a lovely talent that you have, and to perserveer when others would have walked away really shows your true metal.

You deserve evry bit of congratulations that come your way.

Regards and I trust you are travelling well.

Regards

Col

_________________
Vietnam Vet and proud of it.

Okay, I had some second thoughts about making this post today as it pretty much ends up showing what a bad day I had with my fabrication process. However, after more consideration, I figured it's only right that y'all should continue to see the good AND the bad as the reconfiguration of this ol' clunker continues, and that there could possibly something to learn with this. The first part of the day went fairly well, but as the day went on, it started to turn ugly.

When I left off at the last update, I had just riveted on the framework to the outer skin for the waist gunner's door. I was thinking that the window frame was going to be the next step, but decided that I should make the upper angles for the outer frame first. These will help hold the door in it's proper shape and will be what the inside skin will attach to.

Due to time constraints, I decided to only make the straight portions of these angles. When the inside skin is screwed (or riveted) to these, the door will be quite strong, so the corner angles shouldn't be necessary. So the first step was to cut out a piece of bulb angle that I had laying around, to it's correct length for the first side....




It was obvious that I would need to stretch the angle a bit to conform to the correct radius for the door. So, as you should know by now, the first step is to place an index mark on the door and the angle, so that you go back to the same spot every time you check it for shape.....




Then off to the stretcher we go. It is crucial to remember that when stretching the metal, you MUST go slowly. You are essentially pulling the metal apart, so if you get over zealous, you'll crack the piece you're working with. Shrinking the metal isn't nearly as bad as stretching it, although, there is a point where the metal can only be "squeezed" so much before it cracks as well. So here's the angle on the stretcher. You can see that the curve is already starting to take shape.......




It looks like I need more stretching to get the curve I'm looking for. So I placed some red marks where the majority of the stretching needed to take place......




And believe it or not, I the part fit perfectly on the second attempt. It's better to be lucky than good, I reckon. So from here, I clamped the part in place and started drilling the rivet holes and clecoing the part in position...






The one outside frame angle needed a touch of trimming, so I took care of that at this time....




I then deburred all of the holes and clecoed the part back in place one more time....






It was really eating me up inside about how rough this door was looking, but I just don't have the time to make the little cosmetic fixes to it that I'd like. However, I did compromise a bit and polished out some of the "high spots" on the outer frame, where the shrinker marks were......




Then it was just a matter of riveting the frame into place...






Once I did that three more times, the outer frame angles were installed...




Now comes the fun part. Time to start on that inner window frame. I need this frame, not only to fair in the window when the door is complete, but it will also serve as a place for the inside skin to attach to and help with the rigidity of the structure. Now, I need to point out here that I realize this will look nothing like the original waistgunner's door that I'm currently borrowing, but after further review, I've noticed that the "A" model door is actually nothing like any of the other B-24 doors anyway. Figures, huh? Anyhow, I recall seeing in our drawings that we have (I'll have to dig them up later for the non-believers in the crowd, I'm sure), that the "A" model door is pretty much a squared off assembly, much like I ended up making anyway, after all of my other failed attempts at making the framework look like that late model door we have. Also, the later B-24 waistgunner positions were all lowered about 8" or so. This means that the contour of the door is different because of it's location on the fuselage. I confirmed this by trying to install the borrowed door we have on our airplane, and it simply will not work.

Okay, let's get back on track now. In order to make the inner frame, I needed to make my own angles (we're out of stock on everything else). I opted to use .040" 2024T3 material. It is quite strong (same heat treating that's used on the outer skins of the airplane) and is generally easy to work with. Like most everything else, it just starts with a flat sheet. I just picked out a sheet that was the length of our shear (too lazy to cut these by hand this time), and cut out three pieces, 2 1/2" tall. This will give me a half inch flange (minus the radius) when the angle is bent. Now, something to note here is that I was careful to cut these pieces of metal to where, when bent, the "grain" of the metal will be the same direction as the bend radius. It will be much less likely to crack and will retain it's strength this way.....






Now, since this metal is so thick, I needed to be careful with the bend radius and not make it too sharp, or cracking would occur. Since our sheet metal brake has no adjustment for radius, I just cheated by simply bending another piece of aluminum and putting it in the brake first. Then I just put the metal I'm using for my angles in underneath that to get a nice radius, with no cracking.........










So now that the angles were all made, I needed to start shrinking them to fit the window frame. I knew going into this that it was going to be a challenge, because of the tight radius of the window. This is why I chose such a small (1/2") flange in the angles I bent. The smaller the flange, the more it should tolerate shrinking without deformation. And naturally, the all important index mark was put in place, along with a tick mark for where the bending should be done........






Well, it didn't take long at all before I scrapped the first piece. I just tried to get too much shrinking done in one spot........




So, in the trash it goes............




I decided to keep trying with the other end of the angle....




Now this time, before things got too carried away, I decided to polish out some of the shrinking marks in the metal. The old saying of "a scratch is a potential crack," fits well in this scenario. If you polish out the marks left by the shrinker, you should be able to ask more from your metal. The first thing I did was to put some Boelube on my sanding disc. Then I rough sanded the marks off (inside and outside of the angle), followed by the polishing disc. The tricky part about this is that you don't want to take too much material off, as that just makes the metal weaker.......












This polishing allowed me to keep on shrinking the metal around to match the radius of the window frame. This picture shows that I'm juuuuuust not quite there.......




There. That's more like it...........




So, after trimming the bad end of that angle off, it was time to start the next piece........




I had started the bending and just polished the shrinker marks off, but it appears I must've taken too much material off when polishing and this happened when I went back to the shrinker.......




Soooo, you know where it goes........




I started with the next piece and decided it needed juuuuust a little moooore before I started polishing. I was wrong. .....




I'm gonna have to get a bigger garbage can.........




Okay, attempt number.......aww, hell, I dunno...who's keeping track anyway? On this piece, I went step by step to insure I was doing everything right. I started with deburing the edges of my angles.......




Followed by checking the placement of my index and tick marks for bending......




And just nice and slowly starting the shrinking process.......










Okay, I'm too chicken to go any further. Polishing time.......






Yup. Went too far before polishing. Found a crack. [EXPLATIVE!] So, you know the next step........




Okay, I know that some of you out there have been wondering why I haven't done the following step sooner. Laziness is essentially the answer, I reckon. I just didn't want to take the time to do it, but here it goes anyway.

I decided that it was time to anneal the metal before I started the shrinking process. What this does is essentially takes the metal back to a "soft" material. There's much more to it than that, but that's the basic description. As I shrink the metal, it becomes harder. And as you've seen from the other pieces that ended up in the trash can, the metal can get only so hard before it becomes brittle and cracks. Hopefully, the annealing process will help solve that dilemma.

The first thing to do is to get a rosebud tip on your gas torch and make an extremely rich flame (you know...one where it's putting out that thick, black smoke)...




The next step is to lightly run the torch over the piece of metal you're working with. This will leave a light coat of black soot on it. I know it's tough to see it in this picture, but you don't want too much soot on there, just enough to lightly cover the entire piece..........




Then, you add oxygen to your torch, to get a nice, blue flame going. There's no need for lots of heat here, just a nice, soft flame. You then start to apply the heat to the aluminum. TAKE YOUR TIME. This is an easy place to get impatient and burn right through the piece you're working with. Just nice, even movements, back and forth across the metal......




And how do you know you've got the right amount of heat in the aluminum? Well, you'll start noticing that the soot is "burning" off. Don't ask me the physics regarding the "hows & whys" of this, I just know it works. You can just barely tell from this picture that I'm getting closer to being finished, as the soot is slowly disappearing into thin air. Magic.........




And here it is, all soot-free and soft. Once this is done, go into your office and check out WIX for a few minutes, as you want the metal to cool on it's own........




To spare y'all all of the gory details (that you've seen over and over now), I think this picture shows that the annealing process worked for the first corner (lower left).........




So, it was time to start on the next corner.........




Alllllmost there..........




Then, disaster. Upon making one of my last few shrinks, the end of the angle that had already been completed, contacted the opposite end of the shrinking machine, cracking not only the completed end, but the end that I was working with...........




So, after a few choice words, and some gentle reshaping of that piece (made in disgust), I put it with it's friends in the trash can..........




And that was about it for my day's work yesterday. I was already not feeling well and was grumpy before that series of errors, so I had enough. I went home and stewed over how I was going to regroup and make this work. I think I've got it figured out, but unfortunately, I doubt I'll be able to do much with it today. We have some other stuff going on today that will require my presence on the forklift, rather than the airplane. It's frustrating when I'm constantly pressured to get the job done, yet I'm the only one able (and willing) to do some of the other Squadron work around here too. But, I just do what's needed at the time and will get back to the airplane when able.

Gary