About The Project:

The airplane is a home-built, scratch-built Zenith CH 750 STOL. Building from plans/blueprints is a challenging way to build an airplane, since most of the parts you use to build it are not prefabricated. I chose the Zenith CH 750 STOL for its rugged design, its STOL (Short Take-Off and Landing) characteristics and its aluminum construction. Zenith Aircraft Company has designed this airplane so that it can be built from scratch or from a kit by the average person. They provide excellent technical support for both kit and scratch builders. In addition, I'll be installing a 1965 Chevrolet Corvair 164 cid horizontally opposed, air cooled, 6-cylinder engine, with special conversion parts to make it suitable for airplane duty. This is what the airplane will look like when I'm done, although I'll have a different paint scheme:

Follow my progress below!

Monday, November 9, 2015

The Starting Point: Part 4 - Your first cuts in aluminum!

Once you have acquired or built most of your tools, built your work table and built your form blocks, you're ready to start making actual parts for your airplane. It took me over 50 hours of work just to get to that point, and I finally arrived here:


Yep, one big giant overwhelming flat sheet of aluminum. I'm supposed to make an airplane out of this? What? Well, yes, actually, I started by laying out all the parts blanks on the aluminum sheet. Some of them were traced from the cutting forms I made from wood, and some were measured and drawn directly onto the aluminum from the blueprints.


Once the parts are laid out, you start cutting!


And you end up with flat pieces of aluminum sheet that still need to be bent in the brake or formed around form blocks.

More to come...
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