Art Zemon's Blog Posts

We got a bonus warm day here in St. Louis, with sunshine and temperatures in the 60s. I took advantage of it to prep and prime the seat frames for my Bede BD-4C airplane. It made a busy afternoon, sandblasting then wiping clean with acetone and then finally spraying primer. All of the pieces are done, though, […]

The Bede BD-4C is a nutty efficient airplane but, since it was designed in the 1960s, some aspects are a little dated. In particular, the plans call for the cabin to be fitted with just three seat belts: one for each front seat occupant and a single belt to be shared by the rear seat […]

If you have been following my progress building my Bede BD-4C airplane for long, you may have wondered if I quit or vanished or what. I have not posted an update on the project in almost four months. No, I did not quit but I did have a death in my family which kept me from […]

Though I spent most of the week at AirVenture, I did have a little bit of time to work on the seat frame for my Bede BD-4C airplane. I am adapting seats from a Piper airplane and the first post is here, Individual BD-4C Seats. Today, I finished tack welding the first seat. Here are photos of […]

With the seat track supports off at the welder, I am tweaking the seats that I got for my Bede BD-4C airplane so that they fit properly. The old Piper airplane seats that I got are designed to sit on the floor. In the BD-4C, though, they are about 5 inches above the floor. As […]

It is good to have a long weekend with lots of time to work on my airplane. I got almost all of my custom front seat track supports for my Bede BD-4C airplane tack welded together. The trickiest part was figuring out how to notch the square tubing so that the round tube would fit […]

Last night was good for HUGE GRINS when I got to sit in the pilot’s seat of my Bede BD-4C airplane for the first time. 😀 I temporarily mounted the seat with C-clamps, temporarily sewed some furniture webbing onto the seat frame, temporarily added a couple of throw pillows, clambered aboard, and sprouted a permanent […]

When the Bede BD-4 airplane was first designed, in 1968, the plans called for a bench seat in the front. I remember bench seats; my first car (a 1964 Dodge Dart) had a bench seat. Despite my fond memories of my Dodge Dart, I do not want a bench seat in my 21st century airplane so I […]

Believe it or not, sometimes life gets so busy that a guy cannot even work on his airplane. When that happens, the best answer is to take a few days of vacation and get stuff done. Yesterday, I finished up the hinges for the doors on my Bede BD-4C airplane. In my last post, I showed […]

In a previous post, Fabricating Steel Hinge Parts, I showed how I made the steel half of one of the Bede BD-4C airplane door hinges. The other half is an aluminum block which gets bolted to the fuselage. For the upper hinge, the block is kind of teardrop shaped and has slot in it for the steel part. I […]

My Bede BD-4C is looking more like a modern airplane and less like the Wright Flyer, since I bonded the eight foot long section of skin to the right, rear section of the fuselage. Conceptually, it’s simple. Paint the 3M Scotch-Weld #10 contact adhesive onto the airplane and onto the skin.

Here is a bonus post, for those of you who are seriously into the nitty gritty of fabricating an airplane out of a pile of aluminum and steel. I don’t usually post photos in this much detail because I figure that most people don’t care. If you want more of this sort of thing, post […]

The door on the right side of my Bede BD-4C airplane is ready to go to the welder. I had to fabricate two aluminum blocks for the hinges. These will bolt to the fuselage. Then I had to fabricate matching steel parts and weld them to the door frame. Here is a photo of the […]

I have finished the tail skid and the ventral fin of my Bede BD-4C airplane! After fiddling around with bits and pieces for months, it was a huge celebration to bolt the tail skid in place…

In and around helping Act Two Theatre with our production of Chicago, I have been continuing to work on the doors of my Bede BD-4C airplane. I tack welded the pilot side door together and it came out “OK.” At first, it did not fit as well as I wanted but I was able to cut one weld […]

I have spent the last week making the steel frames for the doors for my BD-4C airplane. OK, let me be more precise. I spent the last week making the first frame. Having done the copilot’s door, and figured out all the hard stuff, I made the pilot’s door in few hours today. The only […]