Category: Fabrication

Posted by Jack on in Fabrication, Flight

EAA Sheet Metal Class

Recently I took a class hosted by the EAA at the Aviation Institute of Maintenance. This class fills up quick and I had to sign up last fall for this spring spot. The first few hours of the class Saturday were sheet metal and rivet theory taught by the instructor Jack Dueck. After that we dove straight into our project for the rest of the weekend: fabricating a mock-up of a wing assembly.

The idea was to learn various sheet metal techniques: Forming, match drilling, solid riveting with a squeezer and gun, back riveting, flush riveting, etc. The project is well designed to have a mix of most techniques.

This former C150 was one of the many training tools they had at the school.
Here I am about half way through the project. The skin on this side is all flush riveted.
This is the finished wing section, with built in access port. On the left is another practice part we made to try various techniques.
The top skin was all flush riveted on. Upon completion of the part and a critique, the instructor signed the part.
Posted by Jack on in Design, Fabrication, Uncategorized

Silverware Drawer Organizer

My dad was in town a little while ago and we were trying to think of a fun project we could bang out in a day. Since we moved into our house we just had a plastic silverware organizer that didn’t fit the drawer very well. We used “project oak” from the hardware store and got it done in a day.

Started off with a CAD model in Solidworks. Might seem overkill and not worth the time, but its worth it for the drawing.
A Baseline dim’ed drawing is great, makes all the cuts super easy.
Cutting some wood
..and gluing it together
We left the bottom open so we could use this non-slip material
loaded and ready to go
Posted by Jack on in Car, Fabrication, Race, Rally

Mazda 323 GTX Stage Rally Car

Back when I lived in Portland, I raced a stage rally car. It was a 1984 Mazda 323 GTX: the 4WD turbo very rare variant of the Mazda 323. I raced the car in Washington State in 2009. Later I sold it and bought a Rabbit rally car I should probably make a separate post about.

I bought the car already preped for rally and it had been raced, but the prep was pretty quick and dirty, I re-preped the interior extensively.