I sometimes get distracted when I go shopping... Tami and I ran to Omaha with Katelynn and I started looking at a larger HDTV for the aircraft workshop.  I ended up spending some cash on a 46" Sharp 1080P LCD TV that was on clearance at Best Buy.  Man, that thing is cool.  I spend a lot of time out in the garage when Katelynn lets me.  If I am not working on the fuselage, I am playing with the Mill.  Every guy needs to have their "Man Cave."

Anyway, I put the TV on a wall swivel mount so that I can move it around depending on where I am in the garage.

Katelynn is mesmerized by large screen TV's, so it may serve as a valuable enterainer when I am trying to work on the plane.  She was watching Back To The Barnyard and ended up taking a nap while I was working in the garage.  GOOD GIRL!!!

The other item I upgraded on the Mill computer was added a second screen.  This way when I am drawing RV parts up in CAD, I can have an pdf version of the print on one screen and the CAD software on the other screen.  Man, that works great!!!  Now all I need is to upgrade my desk for that.  I have my eye on a desk / bench that will work great for that too.

You know it is going to be a bad day when your wife gets out of bed only to return a couple of minutes later stating that she should have never gotten out of bed.  While I am half conscious and trying to figure out what she is saying, I hear something to the tune that the garbage disposal fell off the bottom of the sink and the kitchen cabinet has standing water in it.  Ooh yeah, and it stinks....

After coming to the realization that this can't be good for working on the RV today, I went down to scope out what she was talking about and sure enough, the garbage disposal is disconnected from the sink drain AND, not to leave out, IT STINKS!!!!

For us to fix this, it meant a trip to Omaha, shop, and return.  Well as long as we are going to town, Tami exclaims, I want to go grocery shopping.....  GREAT!!!!!

Anyway, $600 later (we never get off cheap when we trek to town), 7 hours of shopping and driving, and we have returned home ready to dive into our plumbing mess.  When we got into our plumbing mess, we found out that the plumber did not cement the drain piping together that is located inside the wall.  Great!!!!  We had to cut out a section of the back wall of the cabinet and sheet rock.  Sure enough, the PVC drain pipe came off in my hands.

Well, when we took the piping apart, the piping was half plugged with what has to be the nastiest smelling gunk I have ever come across.  This makes cleaning the cat litter box smell pretty good.  Anyway, Tami dove in to help and you can see below, how happy she was to do it.  She always tells me that she would rather do home improvement jobs than rivet on the RV.  She didn't admit it, but I think I found a home improvement task in which she would rather work on the plane.

We actually got the drain pipe cemented, the new garbage disposal mounted and working, and as a side benefit, I got the dishwasher working again.  The dishwasher drain was plugged and wouldn't let the dishwasher drain (it was because of the corroded old garbage disposal).

Anyway, Tami was thrilled!!!  Yesterday, she started a "honey do" list for things around the house that needed fixed.  I got a two for one fix today.  And, it DOESN'T STINK ANYMORE!!!!

Like I said, sometimes, you just don't get to build......

This page is the start of my Christmas spending spree.  Of course, everything was purchased under the flag, of "plane building".  This page details my upgrades to tools.  I had another spending spree with Chief Aircraft and Van's for things like antennas, ELT, and Electric Fuel Pumps....  I will detail the plane parts later.

Being fed up with my little bench top drill press, I decided that it was time to upgrade.  A friend at work has done a lot of investigation of what tools to buy for his shop and he recommended Grizzly as a compromise between quality and price.  After doing some research, I decided to go with the drill press below.  It has a nice big table to mount a cross vise, milling table, etc.  I am sure that it won't be great for milling, but I'll bet it will be better than the little Crapsman bench top drill press I have been using.

UPDATE:  The drill press is huge.  I got a chuckle on this when I turned it on for the first time.  The lights in the garage dimmed.  They may have dimmed in the house too.  Anyway, as soon as I turned on the drill press, Tami came out to the garage to see what was going on.  It has a pretty good sized motor on it (1.5 hp).  The drill is solid and accurate.  If I was going to do this over, I would probably get a smaller drill press.  Otherwise, this mondo size drill press works great.  I would consider the Grizzly G7944.  See link below:

http://www.grizzly.com/products/12-Speed-Heavy-Duty-14-Floor-Drill-Press/G7944

I got a dolly that can be used to mount the drill press to so that I can somewhat move it around the garage.

UPDATE:  This seems to be okay for moving the drill press around, however, what I don't like about it is that you do lose some stability of the drill press.  Since I already have the drill press on this dolly, I am going to leave it there for now.  If I was to do this over again, I probably would leave this off of my shopping list.  However, if you absolutely need to be able to move a drill press around the shop, this will do it.  

I also added a milling table to supplement the cross-vice that Kevin is letting me borrow.

UPDATE:  This milling table is a piece of crap.  Okay, I may be a little harsh here...  Maybe is just isn't that great.  It seems to settle out a little when you throw a 40 pound milling vise on top of it.  It probably doesn't help that a drill press doesn't make a good mill, however, my results with this table were basically so-so.  The cross vice that Kevin is letting me use works a heck of a lot better than this table (except when trying to mill an edge at an angle).

I went crazy and also got this clamping kit.  I currently have to scrounge for hardware to mount something to the drill press.  This kit is specifically made for that purpose.  And, it was relatively cheap so I am not out of a ton of money if it don't work that well.

UPDATE:  The clamping kit works great.  You kind of have to scratch your head though to figure out what clamping combination it takes to secure something to the drill press table.

I also got a small end mill set.  The sizes here are hard to have perspective on.  The smallest end mill is 1/8".  I went with 4-flute end mills hoping that these won't chatter as much as the 2-flute end mills.

UPDATE:  The end mills work well.  The 4-flute end mill is not actually recommended for aluminum, but they work well.  I find that I have to stop periodically to clear the mill of chips.  I ordered some premium 2-flute end mills for work on the planes aluminum parts.

Grizzly also had a decent reamer set.  For the little use I will put them through, I am sure that they will be fine.  I don't believe that there are very many cases where I will have to ream parts out.  I know of two cases where you need to ream some bushings to 1/4".  Anyway, these weren't that expensive.

UPDATE:  These are SHARP.  While removing the shipping plastic, I sliced my fingers open.  Ouch.  For the price, if they work, this was a good deal compared to what else I have seen out on the web.

I also ordered a "over / under" reamer set.  This reamer set has has one each reamer that is + or - 0.001" of the more popular reamer sizes and can be used to allow either a slip fit or a press fit.  I have a couple of places I am looking to do a press fit.  aka:  Delrin bushing for an aileron stop, etc.  These may come in handy for something like that.

I broke down and ordered a bench top CNC mill.  I have a few ideas for some parts upgrade for the RV.  A couple of ideas I have, I haven't seen other builders or companies make.  I will keep those ideas to myself until I have actually made one of them....  Anyway, I got engrossed in the mill idea after I saw the accuracy that could be had just by using a drill press and a cross vise.  With CNC, the possibilities are only limited by the imagination (and table size....  I didn't get a huge mill).

YES, I know that this is NOT necessary for the project...   Being kind of a computer geek, this is right up my alley.  I look forward to using this to improve the build quality of some of my projects parts....   Look for those parts in future web log entries.

Okay, now you have to have some way to clamp it all down.  I ordered two vises that I should be able to use on the mill.  This is a precision 4" vise.  This is a pretty big vice and it is heavy.  Something like 40 pounds.  It seemed to settle out the X-Y table I bought for the drill press. 

I also got this smaller milling vise.  This is probably more appropriately sized for a small mill.  This vise has v-grooves in it to hold tubular stock in both the horizontal and vertical orientations.

Merry Christmas to me.  Anyway, I took the evening off after I got done spending my money.  We were having an ice storm and I had to put Tami's mini-van in the garage so we didn't have to chip ice for an hour the next morning.

The fuselage kit was delivered today by Pawnee Freight.  They sub-contract from ABF to deliver out here in the middle of nowhere.  I am amazed that it only cost me $240.47 to have the fuselage kit delivered from Van's in Oregon to no-mans land Nebraska.  That is an incredible value.

I tried to line up a couple of friends to help unload the fuselage crate, but I couldn't line up help and the freight company at the same time.  So I paid a contractor in town who has a forklift to come over and put the crate in the garage.  He charged me $35.  I couldn't even take the time off of work to unload it myself for that price.
Sure enough, when I got home and opened the garage door, there it was.  Not that big for $5K.

I am nowhere near done with the right (or left) wing, but I couldn't resist opening the crate and taking a look.  Van's has always done an excellent job crating the kits I have gotten so far.  They must have this down to a science.  Subway used to coin the term "sandwich artist", I think Van's has some "crating artists".

I quickly found the infamous "bags of parts" and decided that I would start inventorying and organizing them.  These tiny parts always take forever to organize.  Besides, for the most part, it is "mindless work" and I felt up to the task.

Ooohh, what is that round, black thing sitting on the table by the can of Mountain Dew?  Sure looks like a tailwheel to me....  Just last year at this time, I still hadn't bought the empennage kit.  My how things have change in 10 months.  As long as you keep at it, amazingly enough, assembly of the plane parts does progress.

These bins work fairly well unless you need to change the locations of the dividers as I found out tonight.  I got wound up once or twice while going through the bags.  I would fill a particular size of rivet and then a couple of bags later, there was another bag of the same size rivets.  You would think that Van's would figure out how much of a particular thing (rivets, for example) you need and put it all in the same bag.  If a hardware stores organized their parts the same way Van's organizes these bags, they would never sell any hardware.  Even trying to separate the parts out was mindless so it was a perfect activity for a Friday night.

Five or so hours, and I still have a ton of parts to sort out.  I haven't even dug anything else out of the crate yet.  I found several errors (in my favor) for bags of parts, so I probably better inventory the whole kit soon so that if I am short, I can get Van's to rectify the situation before I have to pay for the part again.

I see Van's listed on their website that as of yesterday, they have sold 2000 RV-7/7A kit starts.  That is just incredible!!!  Van's has a good thing going with their planes.

Today, I had success with my first e-bay bid. I have never bought anything on e-bay before.  I HATE e-bay!!!.  It is a cyclic process of frustration.  I would follow something I was bidding on for 7 days only to be outbid in the last 15 seconds of the auction.  People sometimes buy things for more money than the item costs to purchase new in a retail store...  WHAT IS WITH THAT???

I was bidding on Brady ID Pro Plus wire labeler's for labeling wires, connectors, etc. on the airplane.   I lost several of these labelers by being outbid by less than a $1.50.  I ended up with this one for $207.50 and it is brand new.  It is on the high side of labelers selling on e-bay, but few of them have been brand new.  The lowest price I could find from a retailer on this item was $385.00, so I guess I am still money ahead.

I am also bidding on a Semco Sealant Gun (pistol grip) for working with tank sealant.  Since I haven't done any work with tank sealant yet, I should be able to get some good use out one.  I have another several days to see if I am the successful bidder on that.  Dan Checkoway raves about the sealant gun he was given for helping out another RV builder sealing his tanks.  His information on his web site has yet to steer me wrong.