I have spent the last two weekends making a whole slew of brackets for the Bede BD-4C. That means that I have been turning 2″x2″x0.063″ aluminum angle extrusions like this into airplane parts. (Click on any of the pictures below to see larger versions.)
“Turning into” means that I start with a two dimensional drawing of the part on paper. I transfer the drawing to the aluminum and then cut the aluminum out on the band saw, sand or file it down to the exact size, and then debur all of the edges.
After two weekends of work, I have lots of parts.
Sometimes I “draw” the part onto the aluminum by blackening a large area with a Sharpie and then lightly scoring through the Sharpie to “draw” the edge of the part. The scored line shows up as bright silver against the black, like this:
Sometimes I drill the holes first and then do the cutting, especially if there are holes (like the 1.125″ large hole on this CS-9) where some sides of the hole will be cut away from the final part. It would be very difficult to drill this hole if I cut the corner off first.
Here is the final CS-9, cut out and cleaned up.
There are a pair of CS-9 brackets, each with a “matching” CS-10 bracket.
There are four pulleys for the aileron control cables, each with a pair of CS-12 brackets to hold them.
I was very pleased when Jim Hann teased me yesterday. I had mentioned that I made eight CS-12 brackets and he joked, “How many did you need?” I had not realized until then that I have gotten to the point where most of the time, I only have to make a part once. That sure feels good!
