Christmas 2015

Here's wishing everyone an enjoyable Christmas Season and happy and prosperous 2016.

Work on CF-CLR has been reasonably steady, interrupted by some travel, and the discovery of a crack in the exhaust of my 172, which necessitated its replacement.  When I restored the 172, I wanted to do something about the appearance of the tailpipe, so I polished it.  The result was very good, but once you're committed..... 

 Anyway this meant that the new exhaust had to have the tailpipe polished, involving sanding with successively finer grit emery papers before finally buffing the chrome-look finish.  Don't remember it taking as long the first time I did it :(

With the 172 annual in the books, and a considerably lighter wallet (especially after also purchasing an exhaust for CF-CLR and many gallons of paint & polybrush/spray, compounded by a now 40% premium due to our soft Canadian Dollar), back to work.

 The covering of the tail feathers and fuselage is complete and the fuselage is just about ready for topcoat.  I completed as much of the fuselage interior work as I could including test-fitting the headliner, a job I had put off as long as I could and in the end lived up to all my expectations and more.  Phew, glad that's out of the way.

 Not yet decided how to proceed from here.  It would be nice to paint the white while the UV coat is fresh, but I could use some practice first so perhaps the tailfeathers would be a better place to start.  Still need to spray the two polybrush coats and three cross-coats of UV polyspray on the tail feathers.  Also need to fabricate the lower cowling now that I have an exhaust and this needs to happen prior to laying out colours.  Whoops, thinking out load here...

Look for updates in the Fuselage and Tail Feathers sections and again, have a great 2016!

October 2015 Update

Some travel, some fishing, annual inspection on my 172, and some laziness, kept me away from the project some but some progress is being made including the first parts covered.

 Updates are in the Fuselage and Tail Feathers sections.

Also had some fun, met some fellow Taylorcraft owners/restorers and got re-inspired at Oshkosh.

North 40

July 2015 Update

Getting ready to fly to OSH, but I'll be flying my 172 as CF-CLR is still a long way from completion.  The new goal is Oshkosh 2016!

Progress has been made and I've certainly been putting in many hours.  A good deal of finicky work particularly in the parts fabrication department and especially where it involved parts which I don't have and was unable to come up with drawings or photos.  The hat shelf is an example... a seemingly less significant part but CF-CLR has metal door frames and "D' windows which apparently is a less common configuration.  My desire to remain within the relm of the original design further complicates things.

Anyway I'm happy to say that most of the fabrication hurdles have been crossed and the fuselage is almost ready for fabric.

The cabin doors turned out to be more than a strip and repaint so I gave them a separate section.  So new photos and blow-by-blow are located in the Doors and Fuselage sections.

March 2015

March already and I'm behind with my blogging.  Progress on CLR in January and February was slow, in part due to the cold and in part due to the cold.  We were lucky enough to escape the winter for three weeks but of course the project sat idle while I pursued other interests......

February was particularly cold and some days I didn't even bother going to the hanger as it would simply be too cold to work.  Even on the best days anything involving paint/primer is out, so work on the tail feathers was started.  This lead to a need to get dimensions from the fuselage so, after 17 years of hanging from the ceiling in our garage, we humped it onto the roof of the Jeep, and shoveled enough snow to get it into the hangar.

In the next couple of days look for updates to the Wings and Ailerons sections, and new sections for the Tail Feathers and Fuselage.  Check out the "brake" I made to make the wing leading edges and the tube bender to make a new stab leading edge.  Also, on the days it was too cold for the hangar, I worked on the engine baffles, fuel tank and instruments in our basement.

A cluster of clusters.  If I never clean another cluster it will be too soon!