Painting, Assembling, and Filing

I spent a lot of the last week spray painting parts for my Bede BD-4C. I painted the steel parts which attach the axles to the main gear legs. I painted brackets, bell cranks, and push-pull tubes for the aileron controls. I painted the eight brackets for the aileron cable pulleys. My mini-spray paint booth worked great and I did not get any overspray on anything in the garage, not even on the walking stick that I “borrowed” for the top of the booth.

All the painting would have gone a lot faster if I had been more organized and gotten everything together to be painted in one batch. As it was, I primed what I thought was everything and then had to go back and prime a couple more parts. Once primed, painting everything black went pretty quickly but still took two evenings because I had to wait for the paint to dry before flipping the parts over to get the second side.

Based on lots of advice, I opted for a high quality primer: SEM Self Etching Primer #39693. I chose Krylon Rust Tough Enamel in gloss black for the top coat, because it is a good brand and common to find in stores. When I need more, it will be easy to get exactly the same color again.

Once the parts were painted and the paint truly dry, I assembled the pulleys for the aileron cables.

Since I made the CS-12 brackets back on almost two months ago (see the last photo of the Brackets Brackets Brackets posting) it was very satisfying to finally use them for something.

The last task for today was to file down some end caps for the rudder pedals. You may remember, about three weeks ago, that I wrote about assembling the rudder pedals and posted this photo.

In reality, those are just the posts to which the real rudder pedals attach. The tee at the top of the posts gets end caps in each end. Then a 3/8″ diameter bolt runs through tabs on the backs of the actual pedals and through the tees. This will allow the rudder pedals to rotate slightly and activate the brakes. (I will have better pictures of the whole thing soon, which will help this all make more sense.)

Here is a shot of the back of a rudder pedal with the bolt that will be the hinge pin.

I am waiting for some 6 inch long drill bits to arrive so that I can drill the holes in the tabs. Since the holes have to line up “perfectly,” I will drill them in one operation, through both tabs. It will not work to drill through one tab with a normal length drill bit, move to the other tab, and drill a second hole in the other direction.

When my friend Karsten made the end caps, he approximated the size since I did not yet have the steel tubes into which the caps would be inserted. Now that I have the tubes, I filed down the end caps to fit. Not having a lathe, my drill press had to do.