Rudder Tube Bending

After some small bit of trepidation, I determined to do something I have little experience with; tube bending. I started by making a 1-to-1 scale model in SketchUp (imported the Sandlin plan drawing, B4T1, then scaled it) and printing it out on multiple sheets. Masking tape held the sheets in place to act as a bending guide. Next, two scraps of wood, drywall screwed to the sacrificial table surface, acted as the bender:

Trial and error...

The top half of the rudder trailing edge tube.

Now, more printouts for the bottom part of the rudder trailing edge tube and repeat the process. Finally, I'll be joining the two somewhere in the vertical section.

Visualization

Mike Sandlin's plans are exceptional. They're well organized, accurate, consistent and complete (and free!). I know this partly from mechanical drawing classes taken many years ago, but mainly by contrast to other plans. Without naming names, I've paid for more than one set that are incomplete and rife with errors; hand-drawn sections with cross-outs, scrawled illegible notations and inconsistent mark-up. The doodlings of a bored student come to mind.

When working from plans, especially those of us less experienced, understanding and visualization can be helped tremendously by transferring the parts into a program like SketchUp. Training and practice can make it easier to read a blueprint and turn parts around in your mind's eye, but nothing beats interactively turning an assembly in 3D, in real time. Best of all, measurements can be taken and reproduced. The risk is becoming too enamored of the program, and forgetting that the real goal is to produce a machine that will take you into the sky.

Here are a few SketchUp shots of the nose section: