12jaguarDespite my assertion that there wouldn’t be any work done this weekend, we managed to get a workday in today with myself, Cliff, Dave K and Jacob in attendance.
Dave adopted his favourite position at the shot blasting cabinet and Jacob finished off the last of the frame to keel brackets before launching himself at a greater challenge in assembling one of the remaining 5 bomb beams that need making.
Cliff has been experimenting with the best way to form the joggles in the keel diaphragms and has perfected the means to do so, by the time I left today he’d formed 4 out of the 6 needed for the sheets, so assembling the keels should hopefully commence soon.
Having already recovered 2 of the extrusions needed for Frame 11, unfortunately the remaining sheet metal stiffener was too far gone to be recovered although good enough to use as a pattern. To thankfully Andy P has got some metal formed to the correct profile, this needed cutting to size and shape with joggles added to each end. the return flanges needed flattening to accept the top hat stiffeners. With all of this sorted the sheet metal former was drilled in the correct location to allow the longitudinal top hat stringers to be attached to this. Positioning is critical for this as any errors would imediately be apparent once the floor sheets were affixed.
More next weekend
John
12jaguarHi all
Last update from me for a couple of weeks as family stuff this weekend followd by the Coronation.
Slow but steady progress to reprt at the moment, it’s not glamourous but the slog continues on recovering usable parts from the BK716 wreckage. I have to say that Shorts certainly put their aircraft together well and there’s nowhere like the corrosion you’d normall see on an aircraft of this vintage. Needless to say, it all gets bead blasted to make it look good, but it certainly takes time to get to the finished article; so apologies if many of the photos going forwards seem a bit similar.
I couldn’t resist drilling and pinning the first 2 pieces of extrusion that we’ve recovered to our blank frame 11. I’m in 2 minds on whether to keep one of them as it has some definit damage to it, but it is historical and keeps the history; it still jars a bit with me though. Hopefully not too long before we can rivet the various parts of this frame together.
Graham has finished most of the parts required for the extinguisher panel, this will soon be assembled along with some reproduction labels which our good friend Carl Proctor has made, once these are on it will definitely bring the panel to life.
More in a couple of weeks hopefully
John
12jaguarHi FA
As James states it’s mainplane although I can’t identify the individual parts from the Vol 3. I suspect it’s a leading edge rib; there should be an assembly number on there somewhere though.
Nice find
BR
John
12jaguarMorning all and Happy Easter
Had the bonus of an additional full working day in the last week so some good progress to relate. Graham has nearly finished the extinguisher panel with only the switch bracket still to fabricate, although this is quite a complex effort!
Cliff has finished the 2 sets of keel diaphragms and is stood next to one set to give a sense of scale. As you can see from the photo, she’s going to be a big old girl once finished and this is just the bomb bay section of the fuselage we’re building! These diaphragms need joggling on one edge so that will take a bit of effort to get those done.
While I’m waiting for the frame attachment brackets to be finished, I’ve started on cannibalising the wreckage from BK716 for usable parts. First off is the section of bomb floor and frames shown in the photo below, not sure what this part is off but I suspect that that it could be the equivalent of frames 13 to 11 so well within the section that we’re recreating. I do know though that this part includes the stbd outer and centre bomb frames. First off is removing the top hat reinforcing parts to the heavy bomb frame wedges which we’ve already have made. These came apart reasonably well despite having to remove the 5/16″ BSF 4″ aluminium bolts with peened plain nuts. Out of the 8, I managed to save 5 so not too bad an average. most of the top hats have survived pretty well, although a couple were too far corroded to re-use unfortunately.
Once done, we can remove many of the extruded angle sections which can be re-used and also used as parrtens to make new ones.
More next week
John
12jaguarEvening everyone
A slightly shorter visit to the workshop on Saturday, with just myself and Graham in attendance.
That said it worked out a fairly productive time, Graham is nearing the completion of the fire extinguisher and signalling panel, and is now at the stage of riveting the single lug 2BA anchor niuts on the attachment angles. Hopefully some photos to show progress soon.
Meanwhile, I finished off the second of the centre keel diaphragms, I’ve attached some better photos of one of the front ones, with one of the 2 centre panels. There;s a much longer panel still to make along with a very short one to take in a shport piece of structure aft of Fr14. Whilst i was in the mood to cut metal, I guillotined 4 off doublers that join the front to centre and centre to Large (rear) keel diaphragms. There are 2 off doublers still to make which are slightly larger which join the rera to short diaphragms at fr14.
Finally, last Thursday saw the launch of an eMagazine on the efforts to recover and commemorate the crew of Stirling BK716. This has been a truly international project with people and students from the UK, Netherlands, Canada and Germany, they have detailed the efforts of the 1940-45 Aircraft Recovery Group, RNLAF and the Dutch Municipla authorities in the recovery of the aircraft and crew. We have assisted with this in a much smaller way, having provided information on the aircraft via online interview.
The eMagazine and Youtube video of the unveiling are at the following links:
http://www.bk716.their-story.org
Till next time
John
12jaguarHi all
No photos today due to camera issues.
There was 3 of us on site on Saturday, I carried on with the return flanges on the top bomb frame angles and that has now been completed. There are 4 different sets of tooling required for these and it’s that what takes the time to file to shape and to allow the various joggles to be formed.
Cliff meanwhile, cracked on with the longitudinal keel beam diaphragms; the first 2 that takes in the bomb bay sloping bulkhead with the first of the middle plates now cut to size. That leaves one middle to make 2 off plates that take in the floor where it rises aft of Fr13 and 2 off cut down diaphragms for the small part beyond Fr 14.
Dave K, was reclaiming flying control components for use later on.
More next week
John
12jaguarHi Oracal
It’s my (very much) back burner project, WP927
John
12jaguarBelated update all, due to a break in attendance because of the recent weather conditions. Nonetheless, we were back at it last weekend, with myself, Cliff and Jacob on site.
Whilst Jacob was cracking on with the uneviable task of making 300 brackets for the bomb frames, Cliff and I carried on with the bomb bay structure. I started making the return flanges on the top angles found on some ( tbut not all) frames. Whilst we;ve had CAD done for these, we still have to check the application against he wreckage we hold. As some of these flanges also have joggles, the only way to make these is to make some bespoke metal tooling to form these; a time consuming job which once complete accomplishes the task quickly so soon become redundant. Still have a few to finish off but hopefully won’t take much longer.
Meanwhile, Cliff has started on the bomb keel structure itself, with the first diaphragm in progress. This takes in the sloping bulkhead at Fr5 through to Fr8 where the first joint occurs; hence the pointed nature of the panel.
We’re really getting a sense now of making some sizeable pieces of structure and hopefully getting to the point where we can start assembling it all into some more recognisable assemblies.
More next weekend
John
12jaguarHi all
Won’t bore you with yet more pics of frames being made, but suffice to say, we’ve now got 5 out of 9 centre frames formed with 22 in total still to be worked. The photo below shows from L to R; Frs 14, 13 &12 (heavy bomb frames) and 8 & 7 (light bomb frames). So despite having to do some minor fettling to Frs 13 and 8, I managed to form 3 off frames yesterday; also we had some issues with electrical power which needed sorting. At this rate, should get all of the centre frames frames finished next weekend. I’m in two minds whether to carry on with the outer frames (18 off) or concentrate on the centre ones to allow us to start work on the Port and Stbd keel girders?? I’m edging towards the latter course.
Graham is progressing the fire extinguisher panel, which should look cracking before long.
We also have a new volunteer, Jacob who is also apprenticed to the Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage Centre; he will significantly lower the Stirling crew demographic!! So during the week he could be working on a certain unmentionable Avro product, but at weekends be working on a much more refined one LOL. By means of a somewhat brutal introduction, he has been working through the cutting to size of the brackets that attach the bomb frames to the keel girders. No mean feat as they’re three different sizes in the ratio 150:75:75, so 300 in total! Jacob took to it with great enthusiasm; needless to say I’m sure there will be greater challenges ahead and more complex components to create.
More next weekend, with hopefully 3 to 4 of us on site
John
12jaguarHi Bert
TBH, the wreckage is in remarkable condition for the most part. There are some parts suffering from corrosion but there’s also a significant number of items that can be removed and incorporated direct into our build. The remainder is extremely useful as patterns and there are parts that we had no clue about until we’ve now identified them in the remains
John
12jaguarHi all
A busy and fruitful weekend for the team. Good weather brought 5 of us to the workshop, so we were able to sort out several things at once, although a complete power cut did partially hinder us for a while.
Graham is making a start on replicating the fire extinguisher panel based on the one borrowed from BK716. Dave K is stripping down the mangles contraol cables and piework for usable fittings, in this case he’s recovered a box full of oxygen parts. Cliff and Andy worked on weather proofing our 2 ISO Containers so that they can keep what we have in the best condition possible.
In the meantime, I carried on with the bomb frames. The one at Fr14 centre is complete and awaits the various brackets and reinfocing that’s required for it; that completed I made a start on Fr12 centre, this too is nearly complete, all that’s needed is for a metal bar to be modified to allow the return flange on the upper flange to be bent. These are now proving to be relatively easy to make the basic frame with 2 out of the 27 now formed. Only 25 more to go LOL.
No workshop for me next weekend so next update should be on 18/19 Feb.
John
12jaguarNight Flight in 2002
John
12jaguarGood morning all
Best laid plans and all that, but only ended up doing a small amount of actual work on the structure yesterday.
Graham and I decided to go through the contents of the recently delivered container to gain an understanding of exactly what we’d sorted out whilst in Holland. It’s fair to say that we weren’t disappointed by what we found.
A 5′ section of port side bomb bay floor and structure was the largest piece, this contained some previously missing details on how the fuselage sides attach to the fuselage floor; plus plenty of parts that we can use as patterns or incorporate into the build. Next was the complete armoured door from the cockpit which still has 2 out for 3 working hinges on it; talking of armour, there was also part of the observers folding armour plate that’s mounted on the stbd side of the cockpit. There was also a complete transverse bomb bay door torque tube, which looks good enogh to restore and incorporate into the build, we need one more and luckily enough there’s 2/3 of one in the stash as well.
There are 2 more parts that are critical to the build, one being needed short term and the other a bit further in the future. The first is the base of the sloping bulkhead to the bomb bay, you may recall that we have the rest of the bulkhead which we recovered last year; this part attaches to that and fills in some gaps in our knowledge and will allow the CAD to be frozen in that area.
The latter part is the structure under the 2nd pilots seat, including the mounts for the pneumatic system air bottles and a good part of the Observers plaform aft of the seat.
By the time we’d gon ethrough the container, time was running out for us, but we did have a go at bending the flanges for the rearmost one at Fr14. This is what we’ll use as our datum for the bomb bay so its’ critical that we get it right. I managed to bend 2 of the flanges, but this threw up an issue in the bend former which needs addressing on this and all of the formers. We need to file a small recess at each point where a stringer passes through the frame, this is needed so that we can joggle the flanges to allow the stringer to be sandwiched between the flange and the skin/floor. A small issue but an important one.
more next week
John
12jaguarThanks Andrew
much appreciated, i have replied :o)
John
12jaguarThanks guys
Andrew – do you know of one that’s available?
We have access to a foeward lower escape hatch and we have a pilot’s one. If there’s a fwd upper one around that would be handy
John
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