DRILLING RIVETS AND BENDING BRAKE LINES
Today was a lot of fun. I came to the point in the instructions where you are offered the chance to jump ahead a few chapters and begin laying out the aircraft braking system. Obviously this is too exciting to pass up. I have been working on nothing but structural components of the plane since I match-drilled my first part three years ago. The mere notion that I can begin working on an operational system of the plane is fantastic. But, in order to start bending brake lines, and as with all things in the life of a builder, it comes with a price. I am using the Quick Build fuselage. In order to get access to many of the places I needed to lay brake line, I need to drill out the temporary rivets holding in various floor and side wall skins. This was not difficult, but show me a builder that prefers drilling out rivets to pounding them and… well… you won’t.
Overall it did not take too long. Perhaps that is just my rosy disposition now after the fact, but again, at least it is over. I was careful to lay the panels out in a logical sequence once removed. There is quite a bit of bookkeeping to do if you want to put them back in easily. If not, also not likely a big deal. One size does not fit all with these.
BEND IT LIKE A BRAKE LINE
Michelangelo sculpted marble with a chisel. Rembrandt painted on canvas with a brush. I bend brake lines. There are many, many builders who have great difficulty with bending and fitting brake and fuel lines. Many even elect to switch to braided stainless lines for this reason (I likely will for fuel anyways). But for some reason this just made sense to me. The tools of the trade for me on this one were a tubing bender and a flaring tool. I used the Rolo-Flair tool to create the flared ends on the lines, and the Imperial Triple Head tubing bender to shape the lengths of line. The results are pretty neat.
You can see that there are quite a few unique twists and turns required in order to get the brake line from the center line to the leg strut. At each end, the tubing is flared for making the attachments as well. I used the same methodology here as I did for my pitot lines.
In the end, I had a great day. I will likely now go back to making structural progress, but it was a breath of fresh air to spend the day working on a new system.