Monday March 3, 2008
More Shop (Shop Setup)

I've been working in the shop whenever I've had a chance this week, getting things cleaned up and set up. There are a surprising number of little things that I have to do before I'm ready to start working on the plane again.

I cracked open the main wing crate to find everything in pristine condition.

After about half an hour, the wing was all that was left.

My air compressor has been blowing oil (and leaking oil from a few places). When we moved it, we put it up on its side, which allowed oil to flow up from the crankcase into the crankcase head. Then, like an idiot, I turned the compressor on and blew a lot of that oil out into the tank and air piping.

I decided to tear it down and clean things up. Here's the crankcase all opened up. Everything looked good except for a few of the gaskets.

Here's the air compressor, looking a bit sad. I'm also going to replace the check valve where the air flows into the tank, since it was soaked with oil as well. The parts should be here by the end of the week and I can put it back together. I'm thinking about flushing the tank with soap water to try to clear out some of the oil in there... I'd like to keep that oil out of my air tools.

Also this week, I finished the wing jig and hung the right wing up there. As I may have mentioned before, I'm going to work on a single wing at a time.

The shelves have a bit more stuff on them now.

The other wall, just for completeness.

I should be able to get to work on the wing in a few days.

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