Stuka Stunt Main Forum · 33 of 33 known posts recovered
John S.
Randy
Here's one source:
See Ya
Peabody
Your Cic: "If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure."
See Ya
Peabody
Are you referring to rods for a building fixture to hold ribs, or to tubes in the wing itself as part of the structure?
Happy New Year.
L.
"I date this woman for two years - and then the nagging starts: 'I wanna know your name.'"
HTH.
Tony
Tony Bagley
Sarnia, Ont. Canada
Mel D.
example:
https://www.jlindustrial.com/Search/item.asp?IK=AHD%2D35016
-Norm Furutani
The only rod worth even messing with is 3/8" aluminum tubing.
Mine were provided to me by Al Rabe, who is the MASTER of building everything on a model on rods. Al made the jig I used for my Impact wing out of 3/4" MDF. Basically a a full length 6" strip was cut and then standoffs were CA glued to the base board. The rods were then positioned and fixed using 3/8" half rounds made of 1/16" plywood. The rods are then rubber banded to the stands using simple wood screws as anchor points for the rubber bands. The whole thing is very portable once the wing is jigged up and rubber banded down.
The real advantage to the aluminum tube is that it can be sighted from the end like gun barrel. It is easy to see any dips or wiggles using this method. None of the other rods allow this, so says Al. The best part is that the entire wing is one wingle length of rod, so it is very strong and dead straight, especially if sighted from the end.
Aluminum rod can be found at your local metal supply house. They can be easily ordered online also. I found 6061 rods here
http://www.onlinemetals.com/merchant.cfm?pid=4780&step=4&showunits=inches
The City Smasher
The first reference to building on aluminum tubes for jigs was perhaps my Mustang article in the June 1969 American aircraft Modeler. I wanted to build a wing with dihedral and didn't care for the only readily available jig, the Adjust-o-Jig. I burchased 3/8" aluminum tubing from my employer, Braniff, which I used on every airplane except the Mustunts I&II until I lost them when I moved to Jeddah for 6 years to work for saudia as a L-1011 Captain. These tubes were .049 wall and completely satisfactory.
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When I came home, I had to replace my missing jig tubes, made a few phone calls and found aluminum tubbing at a local store called Metal Supermarkets. I'm sure there are many metal suppliers who can supply this stuff, but you have to look for them. I paid $25 for 12' of .058 wall and they cut it into two 6' pieces. .065 is also available, but much moer expensive and overkill. The .049 was enough.
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My first model in 22 years, the Classic Bearcat
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I tried Tom's jig for the Millennium, but it was just too much trouble for a wing with dihedral.
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The BBQB wing
Al Rabe
I ran into a problem posting more photos to finish my post, so... Whoops, my error.
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This is the profile Bearcat wing. It was built on a set of substituted jig tubes while my set was in an airplane in Houston. These are stainless steel. I didn't like them. they were much too soft and easily bent. My fault. Because they were steel, I thought .035 wall would be enough. I don't know if thicker wall stainless would be OK, but I won't use anything but aluminum which ia a very stiff tube. I consider tubes necessary for the ability to determine the straightness of the wing by "bore sighting" as described by Godzilla.
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The Critical Mass under construction.
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Richard Oliver helping with a Millennium 2 wing. It seems that every wing I build needs a different spacing of the jig tubes so I wind up building a new jig base for each wing. The base, everything except the jig tubes is usually 4" wide MDF or particle board. bases are so cheap and fast to build that I don't try to reuse them except the 6'x4" horizontal base. base material costs less than $10. A 6'x12' shelf will make 2 jig bases. When sheeting the wing, it will be necessary to cut a couple of holes in the sheeting to allow the center jig support to reach through the sheeting to support the unfinished wing. Fill the holes when the wing is finished, although they usually wind up inside my fuselages and don't need to be repaired. I use 8" vertical supports to clear installed landing gears. I am leery about using carbon rods or tubbing. Whild building, I frequently accidentally get glue on jig tubes. with a twist, the aluminum tubes snap loose. With carbon or fiberglass tubes or rods, a bit of misplaced glue may permanently install your jig tubes as unplanned spars.
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Long live laser cutting!
Al
Al Rabe
John S.
Al
Al Rabe
I use a modified version of the Millenium wing jig. Instead of the wood uprights that you show, I use adjustable risers. I have a jig base made of melinite with slots routed for 16 jig pieces. I then made 16 right angle uprights with a slot on the base and on the riser. I used some 3/8" square aluminum stock to make adjustable blocks. This makes doing a dihedral wing quite easy. I can show a pic if you're interested, but it seems you have your method down. I recently built a smaller version of the jig for stabs, elevators and flaps. Works very well. I have now combined them with a fuse jig to make an all in one, full plane jig. This is pretty cool since it allows me to build the entire airframe in one fixture.
Randy
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The BBQB in its alignment jigs
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The Millennium 2 in its alignment jigs
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The Critical Mass in its alignment jigs. Prior to glueing, the wing is supported by both tips and a contoured support under the center section. Later, after the wing and fuselage has been glued, one tip jig may be removed with the other remaining and weighted to maintain the assembled airplane in alignment in roll while the tail surfaces are glued.
Al
Al Rabe
Nobody does it better.
Best regards,
L.
"Work is a fine thing if it doesn't take too much of your spare time."
WOW!!
The Old Sourdough
Beer Can Cove, Alaska, US of A
Except for the F4F guy... 
PS Here in Dallas, we mostly get our tubbing from a place called "Metal supermarkets". They are a chain. there may be a store near you. They have a toll free phone 1-877-883-0400 and an [email protected]. I doubt any hardware store would carry these lengths of aluminum tubbing, but many metal supply houses will. I have also bought tubes from a metal supply company called Trident Industries. Your biggest problem may be finding it without minimum purchases. I most strongly advise against using any substitute purchased in shorter lengths and spliced together like arrow shafts or kite parts. you lose the advantage of bore sighting for straightness. Stainless is generally more available, and maybe cheaper, but my .035 wall thickness was easily bent and required much adjustment on the jig, by bore sighting, to keep it straight. Anyway, I used the stainless to build my Millennium II Mustang. It worked but I am reluctant to use it when aluminum is available. I used the stainless because my aluminum tubes were already in use and my local metal supplier was out of aluminum, but, "we have stainless". Maybe stainless with thicker walls would be as good. Aluminum .375 x .058 costs here about $25 for a 12' length and they will cut it into 2 pieces for me. .049 and .065 are also fine but .065 is noticeably more expensive. They only last for 30 years or 30 airplanes, which ever comes first.
Al
Al Rabe
>>A farther thought. using the aluminum jig tubes allows me to flip the wing to make either side up.<<
So do I. Just pull out the top blocks, flip the wing, put the blocks back in. It allows me to insure that that bottom surface along the blocks, that I painstakingly made level, is the surface that the entire wing is built on.
The new jig, only partically constructed at this point, will allow the entire plane to be built floating on the jig. The set up of the jig will take quite a bit of time, but once set, the plane will be straight.
Randy
Aluminum Tubing
Stock aircraft grade. seamless, polished and unpolished 6061-T6* or 6063-T832*, plus other alloys. Prices shown are for drawn 6061-T6, unpolished.
3/8 .058 144 $0.85
3/8 .049 144 $0.99
3/8 .035 144 $0.64
$.99 cents a foot.
This must be the place....
Those are much better prices than we can buy this stuff locally. The problem is with the cost of shipping, and the likelihood they may show up less than straight, in which case, they would be useless. Personally, I'd still hit the yellow pages, and find a supplier where I can examine the tubbing before buying it.
Al
Al Rabe
Some of my RC buddies build with arrow shafts and/or tubing which is similar to these shafts. Interestingly enough, there are handy devices out there which are designed to straighten substandard arrow shafts to be perfectly straight. Same tool and technique works well on most any tubing one would use for wing rods.
Danny Dirt
Floyd
“I have never crashed, but I have proven the theory that gravity sucks!”
Glenn Reach
[email protected]
Well Floyd...built that wing a month or so back and it is very straight.....heres the rub....The kit ribs have 3/8" holes. Everything at the stores I went to was either to short..as 36" would be anyway or crooked. So, looking for a cheap way out, without having to mail order, I found some hollow tube 3/8" dia. curtain rods. Never bore sighted them Al but did block up in several places. The key with this set up seems more to be the stress free aspect of how you built it....plus...if you dont force a a crooked trailing or leading edge onto any jigging system, you rarely have problems. I cut TE and LE oversized, glue to squared rib fronts and backs and trim after sheeting and cap strpis are in place. In short it works great, the wing is really straight...but I really think the key is not to build stress into thing to begin with.
John S.
Aquired some 5/16" and 3/8" dia stainless steel tube from Metal Supermarkets. Comes in various diameters and wall guages. Cut to any length you require. Use the storefind feature on their web site. They got stores everywhere.