My house is  a basic ranch house with a walkout basement. The French doors are wide enough to accommodate moving parts inside. Most of the small components will be built in my heated basement. The plan is to finish the major components in the basement, then get the fuselage on the gear in my garage, and then finish wings and rigging in my hangar. Hopefully that will happen Spring 2006.

 

I had limited tools, no workshop and limited space to build. I've moved out some furniture, bought shelving, made a table, improved the lighting and built an square aluminum tube jig for the empennage construction. 

 

So far not including the kit, I have spent upwards of $5000 in tools, supplies and improvements for this build project. And I'm not done yet. You could probably complete construction with a lot less money, but be forewarned that you WILL spend a lot of money setting up and getting ready to build. And making the investment for tools will speed the process and make it much easier. Remember, if you never use the tools again, you can always make most of your money back by selling them on eBay!

 

Some of the items I  purchased are: 2 Taylor rivet guns (2x,4x), Taylor air drill, dimple dies, Tatco hand squeezer, a gazillion clekos, micro stop drill bits, and lots of other aircraft aluminum construction stuff. Avery, Cleveland and Aircraft Spruce know me pretty well already, and I'll probably be on a first name basis with them before I'm done. (Actually I order almost everything on the web.)

 

Avery and Cleveland have builder kits already put together. Other builders recommended that I compare prices and contents of the kits. I ended up adding and deleting items from both companies. I still received the same discount because each total order was over $500. That wasn't difficult to do.

 

I also bought a 10 inch drill press, a 9 inch band saw, a(another) 14.4 volt cordless drill, shears, clamps, a combo belt/disc sander, and a 30" 3-in-1 metal working machine. You don't need to have this stuff, but it sure speeds things up when you get right down to it. At least that's what I'm told.

 

I made an 8'x4' table out of 2"x4" and various plywood sheets for a top is my basic work surface. I found that a month after I built the table, it began to sag in the middle. I reversed the top cross members, put in a center leg and now I have a nice level surface to work with (until it warps again).

 

For building the Horizontal Stabilizer and the Vertical Fin (stabilizer), I purchased a 10 foot laminated beam from the lumber yard. It is the flattest straightest surface that would be dimensionally stable that I could come up with. You have to have a 9 foot surface to build the HS, so a 10 foot piece is more than adequate. $35

 

My empennage jig was made out of 2"x2" aluminum tubing that is gusseted with 1/8 aluminum plating and 2 inch spaced 3 inch length 1/4 inch grade 5 bolts. The square tubing comes in 21 foot "sticks". It was easy to make 9' wide horizontals, 8' uprights and use the excess to set 4' feet on the floor. I attached the top of the uprights to the joists above my drop ceiling in my basement. It cost me about $150 for the materials to make this jig. After it had been erected for 6 months waiting for my kit, it had of course not moved a lick. So I know I have dimensional stability, which is important to keep twist out of your assemblies during construction.

 

 

I bought a 2 ton foldable hoist. I also have two engine stands for a fuselage rotator. In retrospect, I only needed one. Since the 2 ton "cherry picker" takes up so much space, I decided to use it for fuselage support .  $100

 

I went ahead and bought a 4x rivet gun. The 2x is OK, but is really "buzzy" and does not hit very hard. In retrospect, I would skip it. You can learn to do the job with a 2, 3 and/or a 4x. I like the 4x because it makes fewer hits and doesn't seem very hard on my hands. Unfortunately, my back rivet set with the delrin sleeve does not work properly in it.

 

I bought an assortment set of countersink and regular "universal" hard rivets. It's good to have extra stock. Don't bother buying any soft rivets.

 

I bought a hardware kit from Aircraft Spruce. I thought at the time it was a bit pricey, but I have dipped into my "AN" supply many times. Searching through all of the Team Rocket bags for inventory is time consuming (and sometimes pointless), so labeled bins with lots of AN hardware is highly recommended.

 

I've been using a Tatco squeezer and my clone pneumatic squeezer a bunch. I find that I can squeeze #3 rivets easily with the Tatco, but find it a bit cumbersome. And a big note: the yokes on the Tatco are not interchangeable with the pneumatic squeezer. So depending on the job, you have to perhaps have two sets of various sized yokes.

 

I decided to try to bypass this problem by purchasing a new hand squeezer. I bought a "Main Squeeze" from Cleveland. It is a very light aluminum rig that takes pneumatic yokes. The mechanism is "geared" so that supposedly it only takes 35% of the effort to squeeze rivets. That's pretty much true, and the Squeeze is pretty nice to handle. But you have to be careful because there are instructions that come with it that make me think that there are warranty issues with the unit. In other words, I think several must get broken. And you cannot squeeze larger than a #4 rivet with it. Well, I've only used #5's so far when I screwed up a 4, and that was only a couple times, so that's not that big an issue.

 

I have to admit that so far, the Main Squeeze has turned out to be a great asset. I think my Tatco will end up on eBay by the time my F1 is complete, IF the Main Squeeze holds up.

 

 

Air powered shears. They chew the skin pretty badly and don't turn corners very well. I'd rather use hand shears or a dremel.

 

2x gun. Worthless. Harsh. Buzzy.