Tell us what you did today on your Bearhawk Project

[Deftone]

Began marking up my 0.025 to start cutting ribs today. I would have made more progress but found my power snips are not working. If I feel particularly enthusiastic tomorrow I may start cutting the nose rib blanks out by hand, or I may wait until this weekend and use this weekends 20% off coupon to buy a new power snip tool at Harbor Freight.

progress this week has been slowed due to the imminent arrival of baby! Dont want to get filthy in the garage and have to shower before running to hospital if the lil one comes along!

[Chris In Milwaukee]

If you're like me, you'll make it through half of one, and then throw your hands up and run to HF :-)

Good luck with the baby! Wish Mom well!

[Deftone]

Did you go for the HF 4amp version? Seems a little overkill for the thickness we are working with, I dont want something too awkward to handle for long periods of time.

I will let her know, thanks!

[Chris In Milwaukee]

Yep, that's the one. It's worth every penny. Gets heavy after a bit, but a quick rest and you're back at it!

Perhaps it was the particular covering my metal supplier put on the sheet, but I found it would occasionally hang will cutting because the plastic sheet would hang up in the blades instead of cutting through cleanly. Fairly rare occurrence, and easy to work through. But something to watch for.

[Chris In Milwaukee]

Marked up the .032" for rib attach angles tonight. Headed to OSH Saturday morning to cut them out. Marking up rib stiffeners tomorrow.




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[Deftone]

Just noticed that one of my sheets of .025" looks like it has been dragged across a gravel parking lot. Lots of surface marks (although hard to take a pic of). Would you contact ACS to return this or should I just use it for my ribs?

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[Chris In Milwaukee]

Can you catch a finger nail on them? Are they gouged, or just surface scratches? If you could take them out with scotchbrite, I'd say move forward. If they're really deep, then a return is probably in order.howcdud it ship? Rolled up in a box?

[marcusofcotton]

If you can catch a fingernail in it, get a credit. Otherwise buff them out with Scotchbrite pad.

Chris is faster, looks like we're in agreement.

[Bdflies]

Any chance it's just the plastic film that's marred? I got a couple of sheets that looked pretty bad, but it turned out that it was just the film..

[marcusofcotton]

Good point!

[Deftone]

In some places it's bad enough to catch a fingernail, although the plastic film does make it look worse than it probably is. I think tomorrow I will remove the entire film and see just how bad it is. Perhaps I can work around the scratches if there are only a couple.

Today I began cutting out the nose ribs that I previously had marked up. I did end up going out to buy the electric shears from HF, at $43 out the door I knew they were a bargain once I got started! Didn't have much time today so will finish up tomorrow and then move onto the center ribs. Also need to track down some steel plates for use in the press when doing the flanges.

[Deftone]

I have tried a few local places and they all want to sell them for a hefty price tag. $100 each for 12x12x3/4 . Perhaps I am just being too cheap, but I dont want to spend that kind of money on a few pieces of basically scrap. Also have not had much luck with Craigslist etc.

[Chris In Milwaukee]

My machinist friend said that sounds about right. That would have been our price had he not been able to get employee pricing ;-)

[Deftone]

Guess I was just being cheap then, lol.

[Deftone]

Well I just pulled the film off that damaged sheet of .025 and its pretty bad, I started counting the scratches that would catch a fingernail and ran out of fingers, will send an email to ACS and get them to replace it. What a PITA. Some setbacks at work mean that I wont be able to order more materials for a while, so not being able to use the material I have on hand is pretty annoying.

[Chris In Milwaukee]

Spars done! Stiffeners and attach angles sheared!

28 spars blanks:





435 stiffeners cut:







Tired backs from bending that massive 10-foot brake, and tired legs from stomping the shear. But what a day!




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[Chris In Milwaukee]

A couple of follow-up notes. It's amazing how much force it takes to bend 8 feet of .032-inch 2024! I'm so glad we had access to that 10-foot brake for this. Also, bring friends! There were three of us bending these things, and by the end of the day, we needed all three of us to do the bending. It's pretty exhaustive work if you're a desk driver like me.

It turns out that drawing those lines on the sheet for all of those stiffening angles was a waste of time. I spent the first few attempts trying to chase the lines on the shear. It was an unnecessary bit of heartache. It was good for visualizing, but in the end, we just ended up following the cut sheet and go the desired results. Regardless of what the line said, the fence on the shear made sure we cut the same size parts every time.

Time to move forward!

[N3UW]

Chris,
I was wondering how those layout lines would work when I saw your photos. What I did when I cut mine was cut 4' wide strips to the width the various angles need to be. I then used the side rail of the shear and put a stop block on my shear to make a uniform cut on each angle. I also used the stop block when I bent them. Worked great. You are making great progress.

[Chris In Milwaukee]

Our technique was similar. Since the stiffeners were all the same width, we sheared those strips first. Then we went back and cut each strip individually to the required length for that particular stiffener. It was crazy fast and efficient. Like you, we used the stop block (bar, in this case), and pushed it in until it stopped, sliced it, pushed it until it stopped, sliced it, ad nauseum.

The best part was when the B-17 crew gathered around us, and tried to figure out what the heck we were doing! :-)

[Deftone]

Starting trimming my nose rib blanks prior to routing them and got bitten by Harbor Freight quality tin snips. Couldn't handle cutting 2 sheets of 0.025" together

Luckily I have better tools that I use for work, so can continue. I don't like HF hand tools but thought the snips would be OK.

By end of today I should have all of the nose ribs routed. Need to spend as much time working today out of the house as possible as baby is 5 days overdue and my wife is on the warpath!

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[Chris In Milwaukee]

Getting closer! Good luck with the ribs and the house and the baby!

[Deftone]

Well I got half of the ribs done....

I guess that's my progress shut down for a while. Nothing else really I can do for now other than lurk on here and read about other builders progress

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[Chris In Milwaukee]

It's crazy good at cutting. It's this one, except Bosch brand:

http://www.lowes.com/pd_550725-281-1901036_1z0wcla__?productId=50226921&pl=1

I cut out four 4-place wings worth of metal with the first one.

[Deftone]

This one? http://www.lowes.com/pd_63621-353-85...d=1095225&pl=1

Hmm its in stock at my local lowes, might go and pick one up.

[Chris In Milwaukee]

Yep, that's the one. It's got a 1/2@ shank, so make sure your router can fit it ;-)

[patrickh99]

I built a Statux ADS-B receiver. It is every bit as easy as the recent articles claim, and worked great on a local flight.
I haven't tried to receive weather with it, but the number of planes it picks up, that I don't see out the window, is a bit unnerving.
Running it with iFly, the planes show a direction line and altitude +/- relative to yours. Colors change to yellow and red as collision courses become imminent.
A very handy tool for about $130

[Chris In Milwaukee]

Finished up bending all of the stiffening angles tonight, along with the attach angles. My A&P loaned me the use of his press brake. It took a bit of time to set it up for consistent bends because it doesn't have a fence. We created one with a piece of angle steel, a piece of .060-something aluminum, and some C-clamps. We got it working fabulously in short order.

Don, Tom, Daniel, and Jake helping me out tonight.











435 units bent:




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[Deftone]

Well after much calculating I found that at my present build pace it would be unlikely I would be complete by Oshkosh 2018.

Due to this I decided to bring a build partner to the project.

Meet my new build partner William Alexander Nicholson, born 4/18/16 at a healthy 8lb 12oz!



Judging by his choice of headgear he may want to go for something open cockpit rather than the bearhawk!

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[sbmurphey]

Congratulations!

[interstate al]

Congratulations! Another miracle brought into this world!
My little helper turned 28 yesterday. Not sure where the years went to!

[JimParker256]

Simply adorable! My little helper is now 30 and has a helper; of his own. I'm hoping he (the little one) will enjoy helping grandpa build the Patrol... Although I'm also kind of hoping I get it done and flying before he's really big enough to help. Double-edged sword, isn't it?

[Chris In Milwaukee]

Don and I spent a couple of hours knocking off corners and drilling holes in rib stiffeners and attach angles. Dang, that's a lot of holes and corners. Still lots to go.










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