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NC12350 Monocoupe 110 |
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Fuselage Woodwork |
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I include in this section stringers, the long pieces over the upper and lower longerons, the formers and plywood over the longerons from the baggage compartment forward and the wood behind the doors. |
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These are pieces cut from Douglas Fir blanks. I chose Douglas Fir because it was available locally and didn’t require expensive trucking charges for shipping the long pieces. Also, you end up cutting away over 80% of the original pieces — turning them into sawdust! |
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I cut the inside concave area using a table saw and by passing the piece over the saw at an angle to the blade. A separate board as the “ripping fence” and a feather board to keep it going straight. I made many, many passes, each one taking off perhaps less than 1/16” at a time, followed by a small bump up of the blade for the next pass. |
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About half way there, just showing progress and checking to make sure the cut is centered where I wanted it. The saw did all the work for cutting the nice inside curve.
Once the inside concave cut was completed, I made two passes on each side using the table saw cutting to cut some bevel into the outer curve, then finished shaping the outer curve with block planes and the belt sander, constantly checking the shape as I went. |
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This picture shows just how much curve is in that upper longeron and how much the wood piece has to be pulled down to give that nice flowing curve shape to the top of the fuselage.
It’s really pretty scary pulling that down just waiting for the wood to crack.
But as you can see below, it made it. |
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Made a bunch (probably 40) of the wood pieces pictured on the left to help hold and center the longeron wood pieces.
Moving forward on the bottom longerons, they are covered with wood formers and plywood sking. I had to fabricate a bunch of wood formers, each on a different size . I did this by first making templates from 1/4” thick mdf and gluing them up. See below. These templates were then traced out and cut out using douglas fir. |
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Used poster board to make a template for the plywood skin and cut it out. Because both the side and bottom of the fuselage is curved, the skin needs to be notched at some point, and I aligned the notch to correspond with the mid-width of the wood former right at the most bend.
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