Ultra quick update. I’ve ordered Ron Rollo’s Learjet 45 shell plans. They should arrive in a few days. Meantime, I now have to dismantle the existing shell, lock stock and barrel, take up the raised floor, and clean the hell out of the build room. I shall detail my adventures with the plans in upcoming posts.
I’m thinking about rebooting the blog, too. Perhaps a rename, and keep this blog as an archive of my older projects. Any (sensible) ideas for names warmly welcomed.
Just a quick note. After a hiatus caused by filling up my build room with boxes and packaging material (note to self – don’t order quite so much Ikea furniture in one go again), I started back on the shell, and to my despair I noticed that once again, it’s cock-eyed. It’s simple: my method of building in-situ and working it out as I go is just not working. The shell I’m building is not fit for purpose. I am not the carpenter my dad was.
They say that if at first you don’t succeed, you should try, try and try again. Well, this is my third try and to be honest, I’ve had enough. I don’t have it in me to try again. Read More
I just can’t seem to resist tinkering.
Which is to say, once I’ve built something, you can pretty much guarantee that I’ll come back and re-do it later. If you subscribe to the theory of learning by doing, then this is merely a learning experience. If you subscribe to the theory that I’d rather chase perfection in the bits I’ve already done than actually get any further forward in the project, well, then draw your own conclusions. Read More
It’s nice to be back. The last actual content-bearing post on this blog was way back in September 2012, I note. To be clear, I did work on the project between last September and now, but I didn’t get around to posting about it because of the situation with my mother that I mentioned previously. Between mid-October and about mid-February, I did no work on the project at all. I started back slowly, piecemeal, an hour or two at a time. It’s been a difficult period and a very busy one for many reasons, and the last thing I felt like doing when I got home was anything active. That’s slowly changing, and there’s enough new work to report on to make it worthwhile posting an update. Read More
If you’ve been following this blog (in which case, hi Matt!), then you’ll know that it’s been silent for a while. This is nothing unusual for my project, which is officially the slowest shell build in history. I’m into my third major iteration and I really haven’t got much further than I did the last two times.
You’ll also recall that I’ve had to take a lot of time out from the project because of family illness. I don’t want to dwell on it, because this isn’t the blog for it, but basically my mother was ill with cancer for about a year, and this has taken up most of my spare time. Sadly, she passed away a few weeks ago. It’s an awful disease, and I sincerely hope neither you, dear reader, nor the people you care about, ever have to go through it.
I have gotten a few things done on the project, but it’s been an hour here, a half-hour there, and I’ve not really felt like posting an update for a while. That will change soon.
My time is still far from completely my own – there’s lots to do on the legal front, and as my mum lived a distance away from me, I am commuting up and down between houses at the weekend a lot – but before too long, I’ll be able to spend a decent amount of time on the project. I need to get my enthusiasm back, but I think that’ll come once I begin to get over this huge loss in my life.
At some point, I’ll do a summary post detailing the bits and pieces that have been done this year since I last posted, and then – at some point in the next couple of months – regular service should be resumed. At least, I hope so.
In the meantime, to my regular and occasional readers, a belated merry Christmas, and a happy New Year. See you in 2013.
Little to talk about today, since I just finished off the shroud work I was doing last weekend. I mean, it was 28C outside in London today… you expect me to hang around in my spare bedroom doing woodwork? Not likely! Read More
Still very little to report from the build room. Most of the last three weeks have been taken up by the family illness situation, and so this was the first weekend for a long while that I had time to work on the project. Sadly, my resolve to do lots of stuff was hamstrung by losing my protractor – which I really needed to get some angles spot-on – and then my power screwdriver packing up. Read More
Just a very quick update today. Family illness has kept me from the build for several weeks, and today I got back to things but inadvertently discovered that part of the shell main frame was built to the wrong measurements, and as a result the right hand side of the shell was a bid, well, cock-eyed. So I set about addressing that problem today – removing the relevant frame members, re-measuring, re-cutting, and re-fitting. By the time I was done, that was all I had time for.
So, now I have a straight and even frame, but I’m no further forward. In fact, as I still need to either replace the overhead shroud on the right-hand side, or do something else entirely, I’m slightly further back than I was. But at least I’m no longer lopsided.
Hopefully I’ll have more time to get back to the build soon.
So, call me foolish and impetuous, but as the Great British Summer finally arrived this weekend (though I’m told it’ll only last for a week), I didn’t spend much time on the project. But I did put in a couple of hours and finished off the second seat plinth from last time. And I also built the basic frame for the pedestal, which actually bears some explaining.
Very little to report this weekend, I’ve had other stuff to do so I only managed a couple of hours building. Thanks to the Great British non-Summer, it is at least pleasant working conditions in the build room rather than the sauna that July usually is. Read More
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