Wheel wouldn't ya know?

For Christmas my brother and sister got me an Azusalite 6" wheel ... which I promptly mistook for a hat }{;-)

It took some massive persuasion to get the first hub half to fit into the tire. Finally with some Vaseline to let the hub slide on the rubber and using a dowel to help get it moving, we were able to get it set in place. Insert the tube and the other hub half, bolt the hubs together, add more Vaseline, then pump up the tube to get the other hub half set. It will take some more air to get the pressure up to full recommended, but no hurry. I'll set the final pressure based on how it feels rolling around on the ground in a year...

I also got a very nice belt sander /disc sander combo from my parents. This will really help make the bracket manufacturing go faster. I'll still need to file the last bit by hand, but this will help knock corners off and square up edges much faster. I have yet to turn this one on to see the dust collection in use, but you can see I already put the tool near the A/C intake vent for my apartment. Thinking ahead!

Oh you can also see the filled tire in the picture to the left if you look closely through the nose section structure.

Thanks for a nice Christmas from family and I'm sure that you'll see more posts within the month documenting some spiffy progress.

Parts order

Shhhh, don't tell but I ordered some more aluminum today. It was all sheet stock, namely 9ft of 2" wide 1/8" thick stuff and 3ft of 1-1/2" angle. This many linear feet of brackets should keep me totally mired down in hacksawing for weeks and maybe months! But since I have the raw material in-hand, I'll be more likely to make large pieces of aluminum into smaller pieces of aluminum.

More cabane parts and a bit of drilling

Not a ton of work today, but I did manage to crank out a few more cabane parts yesterday. The rectangular pieces have match-drilled 3/16" holes now. The triangular pieces also are for the cabane, but so far are only center punched. You can't really see from the photo, but there are four of these as well. The two little angled parts to the right are actually for the tail boom section, but I was looking for parts to make that I had material for.

Merry Cabane!

After a slight hiatus, I am back slowly making progress. This time it's four cabane plate pieces. I haven't taken the time to drill holes yet because I want to match drill all of them so I'm going to wait until tomorrow when I'm not so tired.

It's almost time for another metal order. Methinks I can get just a bunch of hardware and bar/angle stock to make brackets for this order and get a massive tube order sometime early in the spring so I am careful with the time input. Slow and steady wins the race. I think I blitzed through the nose a bit too quickly. I need to step back and do some careful maintenance on the parts to remove any nicks or rough edges. Also need to replace a couple u-brackets that likely are under some stress. I also can add spacers inside tubes that would otherwise be getting crushed (that seat tube comes to mind).

Bed time...