Foam cores

“A man’s got to know his limitations” is a great line taken from Dirty Harry, and so true in many ways.

from Dirty Harry (1971)

In my case, I was afraid that enlisting Gina in cutting the foam cores would have sadly stretched the limits of our nearly 30 years old vows beyond the “death do us part” clause.

Enjoyable perhaps, stressful for sure.

Enter… Eureka CNC.

I am sure most of you are familiar with the name, but should you not be, let it be known that Steve James, owner of Eureka CNC, built his own CNC hot wire cutting machine, and can reproduce a number of canard airplane parts with great precision. 

He is also a delightful person to deal with, and operates from Alamogordo, New Mexico, home of Holloman AFB, the same place where I did my T38B flying back in the day (1989).

Good times!

You might say that I am taking the easy way out, and missing out on a fundamental skill set of building a Long EZ, and I would partially agree, but there were other considerations that factored into my decision. 

For one thing, I’ve been married most of my life, I like it, and I wanted it to remain that way, so I didn’t have any desire to unduly burden my relation with Gina. Also, while profile accuracy might not be all that important on the fuselage section, it is very much so with the wings, canards, elevators, and winglets. 

I was after the most accurate foam cores available, regardless of who made them or where they came from, and in my humble opinion Steve is king. 

Price was a concern as always, but screwing up a few cores would have put me back in the same price range (though perhaps no longer married) as having Steve do them perfectly the first time, so I basically bought everything he had for sale. 

Gulp!

It might have taken a month or so to get the cores from Eureka CNC, and coincidentally they were delivered in my absence by my neighbor who works for FedEx, and has already helped me in the build a few times.

My good friend and neighbor delivering the goods

When I finally got to see them, I was astonished by the mountain of stuff I had purchased, and even more so by the quality of Steve’s workmanship. These parts are truly beautiful. 

Where the hell am I going to store all of this stuff?!

These Roncz canard and elevator sections are incredible

Wings and winglets parts

Dunno

More wing stuff

Still wing stuff, I think.

I'd have to guess winglet

??

How much wing stuff is there?

...and this is how I knew not to get Gina involved.

Wow again! Steve, you da man!

There was some very minor damage to the corner of one box, but nothing a little micro couldn’t easily fix.

Not bad at all

Gina wasn’t very happy to have me take over a bedroom with the new stuff, but as graciously as a New Yorker could muster when backed against a wall, she allowed the Trojan horse in.

“Tooling up” - Horizontal bandsaw

My little DeWalt portable bandsaw has been doing an admirable job for years. With the addition of a steel table and a foot pedal, I converted it to a vertical bandsaw and have cut plenty of aluminum and steel with it. 

Poor man's vertical metal cutting bandsaw

Back then however, I could not have imagined I’d eventually come to enjoy machining as much as I do, or that I’d be doing so much of it. Heck, I had never even seen a mill or a lathe before! Needless to say, the little saw has seen more action than I had planned for it on the onset, and I have been looking for a better way to cut larger stock for some time.

In my research, I saw most people going for the Grizzly G0622 light duty style of saws. Many retailers sell them as their own, after painting them with their color scheme, and at less than $300 they are hard to pass up. 

Harbor Freight's version. Looks a lot better in photographs than in person, but it's inexpensive.

I was all primed to buy one many-a-time, until I actually saw it in the flesh, and left with my money still in my wallet. It just looked truly cheap, and felt very flimsy.

The one I actually really liked was the next step up in the Grizzly lineup, the G9742, but at twice the price I just could not bring myself to buy it.

Not as much bang for the buck, but a sweet looking saw, with many upgrades.

Then, the other day, I stepped into a Northern Tool store to buy something  completely unrelated, and as I walked by the clearance section, I saw (no pun intended) their last one of this kind still in the box for $423. 

"Where do I know you from?"

Well, I didn’t even know where I’d put it, but I just couldn’t pass on this deal, and after some forklift magic, the 250 lbs box was in my Honda Element, if only barely.

Make no mistake about it, this thing is heavy, and the box is big (for my truck), but four adults were able to take it out of the car and sit it on the shop floor without too much trouble.

You'll be better appreciated here, than in the clearance section of Northern Tool.

Putting it together was pretty simple, and took about an hour, but don’t count on using the provided instructions, since most of the time you cannot even tell what they are referring to.

She's pretty big!

Packaging was good

Nothing bent, broken, or missing.

I'm going to need some help picking her up

The square piece and the black bracket make up a table that turns the horizontal saw into a vertical one.

The base had to be reassembled a few times, no thanks to the useless instruction pamphlet.

Putting the saw on the stand is just too much for one person, but is very doable with the help of an assistant (thank you Gina).

The retractable handle (not present in the Grizzly version) makes moving it in the shop a breeze.

No tendency to flip over (thank goodness) in the vertical position

Here's a pretend 45º cut

So, how does it cut?

Slicing 4130 steel with the original blade

I was actually pleasantly surprised. 

Right out the box the cuts were perfectly square in all directions, and I was actually able to slice very thin rings out of a 4130 steel tube.

I'm not sure if this really tests anything, but it was fun.

0.026" (0.66 mm) steel slice

0.023" (0.58 mm) steel slice

I did not use any coolant for these cuts, but I did set the saw to its slowest speed of 80 fpm (24 m/min). After the cuts, the blade was still cold while the rings were pretty warm.

The hydraulic down-feed of the blade is a beautiful thing, and operates smoothly, with plenty of adjustment.

So far I'd recommend it, especially at the clearance price. We'll see how it holds up in time.