This week has seen a bit of a surge forward in progress, or at least this is how it seems. On Tuesday I drove over to Falmouth to pick up the finished plywood profiles from Steve Neal at Fibre Fusion. They had made a beautiful job of the cutting and it was great to see all the parts for real after so long looking at them on screen. These were all dropped off at Trelonk and put into the (nearly) finished workshop on Wednesday morning, after spending the night on the roof of my Land Rover.
After a quick look at the parts, Harry and I went off down to a local farm to rip the ash trunk into pieces for seasoning. Slicing up a tree is not an easy task, particularly when there are various dimension requirements for the contents to go into the different parts of an aircraft (or more usually a boat). It was essential to get the trunk cut so that it can start drying.
Normally, air dried timber is cut and then spends one to two years seasoning in a shady, ventilated environment so that the moisture content can reduce to prevent the timber moving (shrinking) in use. The Parnall Panther uses ash in a number of parts – much of which will be steam bent to shape. For this we require wood with a higher moisture content so that it is more compliant. A couple of months inside the workshop alongside the draughty wall should result in it being about right.
Thursday saw a rush of activity with Sol from the Marine project joining in to get the jig put together. All the parts fitted very nicely and the joints came together exactly as Simon had planned it. We managed to order the right amount of hardware and it’s fair to say that it almost built itself. There is much more of a presence in the workshop now and the scale of the project is beginning to reveal itself. After time well spent in planning and preparation it is great to have some tangible evidence of what we are doing.
