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I had started this in early 2010, but other pressing matters relegated it to a pair of wooden pegs in the basement til this past September, where it (again) resides til I finish off some end of year projects. At this moment, the arm and foot rests need to be made, some corded accents, and a base for it needs finishing.
The blueprints were (for obvious reasons) rather large, so i just printed the main body and one wing.. I made it 15 feet across (scaled down from the 23 or so I guesstimated ), because the components need to fit in my car.
Since I don't have an oversized printer, after drawing up the blues, I printed out i think around 60 sheets of 8 1/2x 11s, and spent the day taping the buggers together PosteRazor would have made this easier :p
The main body is mdf on one side, and masonite/insulation foam/tagboard on the other. The body was painted with some old thick paint and a cheapo brush that I intentionally let paint dry on
I've been using 1/8" thick masonite for the top, insulation foam for the core, and the sides are tagboard. Though individually flimsy, when glued together (using hot glue lol) they're actually fairly strong.
So yeah.. lots and lots and lots of this :p
left to right-
-Masonite board, cut to shape
-insulation foam, also cut to shape (i later found if i just glued the Masonite to the foam sheet, I could then just use the edge to cut it out faster.)
- cut out & glued together
-hot glued the sides on :)
I found that a quick way to cut the tagboard strips (instead of measuring out every one) was to take a straight edge, and attach some tagboard scrap to the bottom, laid out the width i needed for the edge. I then just slide the sheet under it til it butts into the tagboard glued underneath, and cut away. Think I had to do around 100 or so strips for one size alone :p
I am concerned with (amongst other things) Torsional strength. (twisting the spines), I'll need to work around that real quick, though I think (and hope) the fabric they will sandwich will help provide additional support.
Here's the state when it was ditched in July 2010 ^^; Its a lil more beige now from all the dust.
September 2011
Over the last 4 days, I've cut and assembled the other 28 spines that are left.
Some of them I had doubled up, to provide extra support and give the wings more dimension.
Though i had a vague idea of how i was going to connect the part together, I hadn't actually done any blues/ schematics for the connections. Wound up engaged in a lot of snip/glue/ bull****tery here til the parts connected right. The layers alternate between those of the inner and outer wing assemblies, and a peg will be run through the entire lot when done. here's to hoping that its strong enough! *fingercross*
Once one side was assembled, I flipped it over and mirrored the other parts by assembling it right on top of the finished one (hope that makes sense!) . It may be a couple mm off from the original blues, but as long as its aligned to the layer that will be attached to the other side, it'll be fine.
The outer sides of the spines will be covered after the fabric is stretched over them :)
And here's the current state of one side. I can't easily lay it out fully though, til that side of the basement gets cleared off
September 25, 2011
After assembling the rest of the pairs of outer wing spines, these were all painted. Again I used the thick old enamel leftovers so I got thick streaks and the like.
After it dried, I sprayed the parts with rustoleum brown primer, and did a quick wipe with an old bedsheet.To bring out the texture more, I used some sandpaper.
Left them all out to dry, it was like having two gliders in the basement with both sides of the wings splayed out in the basement lol
Time to start stretching the fabric onto the wings! Since the spines would move around when setting them, I decided to temporarily tack the thing to a large sheet of insulation foam using the hot glue gun. This would keep the spines from moving while i did the fabric.
Did my best to stretch the fabric on there, and hot glued it all down. You can't bounce a quarter off it, but it'll do.
The other half was aligned and glued down after some of the trimming was done
I laid a bead of hot glue around the edges that would remain "raw" to keep it from fraying and stretching too much. Used a scrap piece of silicone to press the bead flat :)
Here's one of the outer wings almost done! I still need to tagboard the outer edge though
September 27, 2011
Did a test fitting of the first of the wings yesterday.
Then set back to work on the inner section of the wings. I still needed to add more spines, so rather rinse repeat with the glue!
Foam scraps were tacked onto the spines to stop them from moving around while stretching the fabric
Added some wood bits to one side, because the spines added would get crushed if the outer wing pushed into them. That did the trick!
another fitting check,
and strength check. I also held the thing horizontally to see if the wing will crack and crash/burn, but it held fine, and I heard no telltale squeaking/crunching sounds of a dying joint, so it looks like this will work!
The wing weighs about 11 lbs so far (the outer wing is about 5 1/2 lb) .. it'll probably go up to about 13 by the time I add the last segments (I forgot a major piece of it, so I need to go back and add that )
September 29, 2011
And more of the same.. though i'm a lil behind, its coming to its home stretch
I forgot to add a section on the top of the wing, so I put those in.
Quick bodged the footrest, and the hand grips will be added as soon as I finish the bar that connects it to the fuselage
September 30,2011
The next step was getting the wings to connect to the fuselage. These segments wre made out of plywood, as they would be taking a massive amount of pressure from the wings. Holes were cut, and the wings (and fabric) were pulled through.
The fabric was hotglued in place. I snipped the fabric on the inside, so i could evenly glue it down. The
The wooden peg is epoxied in place. It actually extends into the wing for added support. This had holes drilled in, and its what connects the wing to the fuselage (along with another peg further down.
Here's the current state of the glider. It weighs around 30 pounds, which isn't bad for a 15 foot x 7 1/2 foot.. thing. Will update this blog posting when its completed!
