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wood skills vs aluminum skills

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lurker

Well-Known Member
Joined
Apr 13, 2010
Messages
406
Location
salisbury, NC
i'm fairly handy with wood, have built some plain and simple furniture and a kayak or two of wood and have a couple of nice tools, nothing really fancy, table saw, router, drills, sanders, that sort of thing. but after starting a couple of fuselages, i see that wood is very sensitive to the quality of the glued joints, which i don't really know about until i put them under load, at which point they fail somewhere, usually catastrophically. this is why i don't talk much about building airplanes lately.
i wonder if aluminum tube and gusset would be more appropriate for an ultralight? i've never done much with aluminum tube, but am competent with a hacksaw (or a powered equivalent), drill press and pop rivet gun. would it be difficult to pick up the necessary skills to consistently bend and join tube? what about special tools?
 
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