Loose Headrest Screws

While installing the wing bolts and hooking up/adjusting the controls I found it easier to reach inside if I removed the baggage compartment.  As a result I've taken it off several times.  Each time it seemed to be missing more of the screws holding the headrest on.  I decided to remove the headrest and see if I could do a better job of fixing the old screw holes.   Most of them were staying in by wishful thinking.

 With the headrest off I could see that moisture, over the years, had ruined most of the holes.  On top of that this was the second aluminum skin on the baggage compartment so there were 2 sets of holes.

I decided to plug all the holes with T-88 epoxy and toothpicks or matchsticks, whichever filled the hole best.  I worked the glue into each hole to assure a good bond.

To keep the glue from running out of the holes I put blue painter's tape on the back side of the wood frames.

 I used an X-Acto saw to cut off the sticks, then a coarse file to remove excess glue.

A coat of varnish finished it so the holes are ready to re-drill and re-install the screws.

It worked the screws are all tight and I won't have to worry about the headrest coming loose in flight.

Control Stick Boot

 We had an old rubber Gear Shift boot sealing the hole in the floor where the stick comes up through.  It was cracked and dead so I needed a new one.  As with the Cabane strut boots I wanted the older look of leather.  I still have plenty of goat skin scraps so that was my material of choice.

The idea was an eight sided Tee Pee with a Bellows at the bottom so it would move without restricting the stick.

 I made a card stock pattern for the bellows rings, traced it on the back of the leather and cut them out.

 To hold them properly aligned while sewing I used a narrow bead of Contact Cement to glue the 2 pieces together.

It made sewing them so much easier since they couldn't shift.

I decided that with one piece of the Bellows attached to the floor there wouldn't be enough movement.  To add more flex to it all I made a second set of rings, and glued and sewed them to the first set.  Much better.

 For the Tee Pee cone, again a card stock pattern, created with a little trigonometry.  Yes, we like math and drafting.

The pieces were glued and sewn together in pairs and then the pairs sewn together, leaving a flap so it can open to get it over the stick grip.

 To close the Tee Pee there is a piece of Velcro on the side and a shoe lace for the top. The shoe lace allows you to tighten the top snugly to the stick so it can't sag and bind the stick.

The Bellows has lots of movement.

 An aluminum ring was made from some 0.040" 2024-T3.

Holes were punched in the leather to match the screw hole pattern and the ring was glued to the top of the bottom piece in the Bellows.

Number 4 screws 1/4" long attach it nicely to the floor board.

 It looks good and with full deflection of the stick you can't feel it's there.  I need to go fly this thing.

Windshield Installed

 I went to install the piece of cowling with the windshield and realized it wouldn't go on with the center section installed.  I thought I could split the bottom of the cowl where the rear of the cabane strut attaches so it could get around the strut.  That didn't work either.  I finally realized I needed to remove the rear strut bolt and pivot the strut up around the front bolt. That worked fine and I probably could have done it with the center section still bolted to the struts.  Oh well, we got there.

 Once I had it on I realized I hadn't installed the little tabs to hold the top of the instrument panel from tipping forward with the weight of the instruments, so back off again.

I decided to use some old scraps of 1/8" x 1" aluminum angle.  I thought I would just tap a screw hole in it rather than install a nut plate.  In the end I used a nut plate on each.

 The instrument panel is tipped slightly from perpendicular to the cowl so I had to bend the angle about 3/32" to get a nice fit.

 To get the holes in the brackets to align with the holes in the Instrument panel I riveted the brackets to the cowl and re-installed it. 

I then drew the hole locations on the panel so they would be close to the center of the brackets and drilled through the panel and the brackets.

With the cowl back off I could then install nut plates on the back of the brackets.

 The cowl and center section are finally back on, again, with the panel screwed to the brackets.

 In this process I discovered another small problem.  My clever bracket for the temporary vacuum gauge was bolted to the 2 bolts on the outside of the cowl not the 2 on the inside.  I'll need to make another bracket.

 I also found that some of the screw holes along the top of the firewall don't align with the cowl holes.  I used a circle template to draw where the holes should be.  Then I took out all the screws except the aft screw on each side of the cowl. This allowed me to tip the cowl up just enough to re-punch the holes with the Whitney punch.  I used a punch with the nib ground off and aligned the punch with my drawn marks.  It worked.

 While I had it up I put a bead of high temp. RTV along the cowl with strips of waxed paper on top.  The waxed paper is to keep the RTV from gluing the cowl to the firewall while still forming a nice gasket to keep oil and fumes out of the cockpit.

This time I think the cowl is on to stay.

 I used Contact Cement to glue some anti-chafing strips to the edges of the cowl piece above the engine.  This piece isn't intended to move, but all the engine vibration and air loads do cause it to wiggle slightly.  The 2 access doors are just held shut by belts so they wiggle quite a bit.

Fortunately the holes in this cowl piece all match the firewall and it covers the mis-located holes in the other piece.  We're getting there.

Head Rest and Baggage Compartment

The plan for the headrest and baggage compartment was to repaint the aluminum, replace the headrest cover with leather, to match the seat, and then use some of that leather to cover the cockpit coaming.

 When I removed the sheet metal I found many of the joints on the headrest had come undone.  The gussets were fine it was the joints on the bulkhead and cross piece which did not hold.  None of these had the snug fit required for Resorcinol glue.  I cleaned them up and re-glued them with epoxy.  They should last this time.

I used a piece of 2" foam rubber for the padding.

 I sewed up a new headrest cover from the seat leather.

 The cover was nailed to the bulkhead using my brad nailer.

 There were also some loose joints in the baggage compartment frame so I re-glued them and painted the inside white to make it a little brighter inside.

 The aluminum pieces were stripped, sanded and repainted.  I painted the inside of the cockpit area flat black and the inside of the baggage compartment white.

The aluminum pieces were screwed back onto the frames with brass screws.  Steel crews just get rusty in wood.

 The headrest is screwed to the skin of the baggage compartment.

 The baggage door was covered with Naugahyde.  I decided to cover it with a piece of 1/16" mahogany plywood.  My original plan was to stain it with a dark stain, then mask the word Experimental (required by regulations), sand blast away the stain on the letters, and varnish it.  That all worked perfect but the color of stained mahogany is not enough darker to see the difference once it's been varnished.  This would have worked with birch plywood.

Instead I painted the text a cream color and moved on.  I didn't want the word Experimental on the outside of the plane.

 I had pre-drilled all my screw holes and then sprayed the door and the wood with contact cement.

 The problem was how to get all the holes aligned as the 2 parts mated because there is no moving it once they tough.  I used some pin punches to align them at the bottom as I brought them together.

A couple clecos were used at the top and then the parts were pressed tightly to set the glue.

It worked and all the holes matched.

 The frame for the cockpit coaming is a piece of 3/8" steel tubing Pop-riveted to the aluminum skin.  It worked as good as a rolled edge.  You probably don't want to stand on it but it's been there since we widened the fuselage with the stringers, and the skin has no wrinkles after about 45 years.

 To cover the structure we used a piece of 3/4" heater hose.  The hose was split so the curve naturally fit the coaming.  There isn't room for it to fit on the inside so it needed some of the hose removed at the ends.  If I were making new skins I would make them just tall enough to avoid the fit problem at the forward end.
Originally we had Naugahyde glued over the tube and wrapped to the inside.  That worked but I lost one of them while flying one day.

 Before we widened the fuselage with the stringers we had the cover laced to the skin.  That's how it's done on my WACO NINE so that's what I did this time.  No more pieces blowing off in flight.

I cut 2 strips of 6" wide leather.  I glued the folded edge, where the lacing will go, and then sewed near the edge for a finished look.

 I found I had a problem gluing the ends to the hose.  I wiped the hose with MEK and that let the contact cement stick.

 I used the calipers to figure out where the front of the bulkhead was so I could locate a hole just in front of the bulkhead.  I then located the rest of the lacing holes so they were evenly spaced.  I punched 3/16" holes in the leather but drilled 1/8" holes in the aluminum so I could cleco the leather in place as I worked.  Once I was ready to do the lacing I re-drilled the holes to 3/16".

 To locate the holes in the leather on the inside I just pulled the leather tight down and put a tick mark at the bump made by the end of the cleco.

Once the holes were punched on the inside I used some 1/8" Pop-rivet washers to allow the clecos to hold the leather in position.

 I used a 45" boot lace and started at the forward end so the knot would be in the baggage compartment.  By having a hole just in front of the bulkhead the cord just wraps around the frame while lacing.  The door doesn't fit so tight that the lace gets in the way.

I didn't worry about which end should be longer at the start in order to get even ends for tying the knot.  Once it was laced I just worked some slack around to get the ends even.

I knotted the ends with a square knot locked with a half hitch on each side.  It works.

 I like the look and it's very secure.

At the forward end I located holes to use the skin crews to hold the leather.  I got some brass upholstery washers and one size longer crews.

At the forward end I drilled a hole in the aluminum and pulled the leather tight with some rib stitch cord.  Other than a small wrinkle in the leather I like it.

 It's ready to go back on the plane.

The lock in the baggage door uses the glove box key from our old '58 Chevy Station Wagon that we used to haul the fuselage to Swartz Creek High School for a display back in '64.  I think that's the station wagon we used to bring the engine home from Andy Anderson in Illinois.  Ah the good old days.