pierre smith

pierre smith

Well Known Member
Mornin' all.
I saw an RV in Florida earlier this year at Lakeland with all aluminum tail tips and it was really beautiful. Who knows of a fabricator that could/would make me an all aluminum cowl for a -4 and also the empennage fairing? Any leads as to the owner of the aforementioned RV also appreciated.

Thanks,
 
Pierre, The plane you saw was likely to have been Dick Martin's RV-8. He has the emp tips all bent up real nice with AL sheet.

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I am guessing that an all aluminum cowling might be cost prohibitive. Unless you find someone who is an exceptional fabricator and is willing to tinker for free. A rare combination.

:) CJ
 
Mighty Mouse

"Mighty Mouse" is Mike McCain's beautiful polished RV out of the Waco area - he brought it out to eh Big Bend Fly-out. I looked at the tips and asked "how did you get the fiberglass to look so much like aluminum?"

His response was "They're made out of aluminum!!" The cowl was painted, so I don't know if it's metal, but I bet that anyone that did tips might know if anyone has done a cowl....

Paul
 
Near you, Clyde Stanfield was reported to be doing exactly what you describe:

http://home.hiwaay.net/~sbuc/tvrvbg/barn.htm

Also near: John Neal's shop was on the Griffin airport; call Sportair and ask them. He was doing an advanced metal shaping class for them at one time. Good guy.

Farther from home (CA), pro metalshaper and Model 12 builder Jimmy Kilroy can do it. Go to www.2wings.com and drop Darin a note for contact info.
 
Metal workers

It would be cool to have metal tips and cowl. The people that can do this are magicians.
 
You mean this guy /

I was talking to this gentlemen at length about his aluminum tips at SNF. He made it all sound pretty easy. But I'm not to sure about that.

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Hey Pierre...

Hey Pierre... I'm buying an english wheel and the rest of the sheet metal stuff if you want to get together.... I'd love to be able to build all metal fairings... clyde is in the tenn valley group and I emailed a couple of guys that do that and they should get back to me soon....
Brian
 
Clyde flying yet?

Thanks much everybody......I figured that if you want a really light -4, then you don't need paint. That being said, I'd be willing to bet that instead of an $8000 paint job, you could get an aluminum cowl and tail fairing, maybe not.

Brian, is Clyde's -6 flying yet. If so, I'd love to go and see it.

Regards,
Pierre
 
is Clyde's -6 flying yet. If so, I'd love to go and see it.
Click to expand...

Clyde Stanfield's project has been on the back burner for several years. In spite of efforts of several of us to prod him into action, the all-metal RV-6A still looks about the same as it does in the TVRVBG photos.

Clyde's metal work is beyond description, some of the most incredible workmanship I have ever seen. I hope he returns to the project soon.
 
I was talking to Dick Martin about his tips yesterday. He explained where he had to bend/stretch/shrink metal in order to make it work. He went to about a dozen in order to turn out 1 that would work but it said it was easy.

Get in touch with him, I'm sure he'll be happy to give you more information about them. He is at Spruce Creek right now, just a short hop away at RV speeds.
 
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