Re: A Visit to Ray Moore and Lucky 13
Sat Apr 14, 2018 2:56 am
Thank you for the offer Colin. Unfortunately, there is enough of a difference between a K-4 and K-2 that it would not help. The K-2 is for a .30, with the K-4 being a .50 mount.
Taigh has a K-2A in the collection out there, and I'll probably end up setting something up with him, so I can go out there and do a set of drawings and pull a set of profile forms off of it.
Taigh has a K-2A in the collection out there, and I'll probably end up setting something up with him, so I can go out there and do a set of drawings and pull a set of profile forms off of it.
Re: A Visit to Ray Moore and Lucky 13
Sat Apr 14, 2018 12:10 pm
I sent a .30 cal ball socket to the desert rat team a while ago but it was just the ball part but it might be worth having a look at?
Re: A Visit to Ray Moore and Lucky 13
Sat Apr 14, 2018 7:47 pm
Okay, it's probably time for an update.
The wooden parts of the interior doors are complete. According to the blueprints, the inner doors are hollow-core types, with sheets of SUPER-thin birch plywood glued over blocks of spruce. My dad and I generally followed the blueprints, though we strengthened the doors a bit by enforcing the hinge and latch areas, as well as using a traditional arch-block. Here are the doors' innards:
You can kind of make out the innards of the original doors in this picture from Memphis Belle's radio room, taken by Karl Hauffe back in 79.
It's kind of funny (and annoying) that the blueprints so readily shift back and forth from decimal to fraction. In working on some of the door charts, I agonized over one mathematical conversion only to discover that it was the same size as the chart above - it had only been written out differently. I digress. My wife is working on these charts, and while I had hoped to show them already, the scarcity of sources means that she's having to rebuild a lot more than expected. This one, in particular, is a toughy: it's the CG chart.
I also took the time to clean-up what hardware we already had. We do not have enough hardware to outfit all the doors just yet. We have two front plates, one rear plate, and one handle. We could make-do with other parts, but it would not be accurate. The biggie right now is door hinges, of which we have none. There are also two picture frames that mount on the cockpit door (one 10 1/8 by 5 5/8 and one 10 1/8 by 8 1/8). I have also gone ahead and ordered all the screws will need - after all, Phillips head screws are forbidden! You can see a comparison of the cleaned plates here: (the plate without the curve is the one that goes on the side of the door with the aluminum border)
Anyways, here are the completed doors sitting in my living room.
We have not finished installing the hardware nor have we attached the charts to the doors yet. The folder on the cockpit door is the Flight Reports Folder. Karl Hauffe was able to provide me with the measurements for this as the blueprints did not list dimensions - only parts. We also took the time to build the tail gunner's crawlway hatch. As far as I know, only Memphis Belle still has one installed. The hardware for this, naturally, is virtually nonexistant. It's some sort of slide-bolt with a wooden knob mounted beside the latch. The hinges are supposed to be small affairs that just barely screw on to the door. Regardless, this door is mounted directly behind the tail wheel.
Next up will be finishing up the Cramer posture chairs. We need an example of a four-leg type so we can make some replicas. I have fabric that is a good match, but I cannot do much with it until we have backrests. I had hoped to borrow a chair and a door-hinge from the guys in Urbana but I haven't been able to get in touch with them.
Speaking of Urbana, their radio table looks really nice. Looking over the blueprints, they managed to build the small, pencil-drawer that mounts underneath the table - very rare. The radio table mounts on a swivel, which I'll need an example of before I can get started building. The blueprints are not at all what I expected: the table is hollow and has a terracotta-colored linoleum covering on its top.
Lastly, Colin has asked for me to post another picture for him on WIX. He believes it to be a gun mount of some type but was hoping one of you might have more information. Colin is being nice enough to let us borrow his nose-gun mount, so kudos to him!
-G
http://www.gblume.com
The wooden parts of the interior doors are complete. According to the blueprints, the inner doors are hollow-core types, with sheets of SUPER-thin birch plywood glued over blocks of spruce. My dad and I generally followed the blueprints, though we strengthened the doors a bit by enforcing the hinge and latch areas, as well as using a traditional arch-block. Here are the doors' innards:
You can kind of make out the innards of the original doors in this picture from Memphis Belle's radio room, taken by Karl Hauffe back in 79.
It's kind of funny (and annoying) that the blueprints so readily shift back and forth from decimal to fraction. In working on some of the door charts, I agonized over one mathematical conversion only to discover that it was the same size as the chart above - it had only been written out differently. I digress. My wife is working on these charts, and while I had hoped to show them already, the scarcity of sources means that she's having to rebuild a lot more than expected. This one, in particular, is a toughy: it's the CG chart.
I also took the time to clean-up what hardware we already had. We do not have enough hardware to outfit all the doors just yet. We have two front plates, one rear plate, and one handle. We could make-do with other parts, but it would not be accurate. The biggie right now is door hinges, of which we have none. There are also two picture frames that mount on the cockpit door (one 10 1/8 by 5 5/8 and one 10 1/8 by 8 1/8). I have also gone ahead and ordered all the screws will need - after all, Phillips head screws are forbidden! You can see a comparison of the cleaned plates here: (the plate without the curve is the one that goes on the side of the door with the aluminum border)
Anyways, here are the completed doors sitting in my living room.
We have not finished installing the hardware nor have we attached the charts to the doors yet. The folder on the cockpit door is the Flight Reports Folder. Karl Hauffe was able to provide me with the measurements for this as the blueprints did not list dimensions - only parts. We also took the time to build the tail gunner's crawlway hatch. As far as I know, only Memphis Belle still has one installed. The hardware for this, naturally, is virtually nonexistant. It's some sort of slide-bolt with a wooden knob mounted beside the latch. The hinges are supposed to be small affairs that just barely screw on to the door. Regardless, this door is mounted directly behind the tail wheel.
Next up will be finishing up the Cramer posture chairs. We need an example of a four-leg type so we can make some replicas. I have fabric that is a good match, but I cannot do much with it until we have backrests. I had hoped to borrow a chair and a door-hinge from the guys in Urbana but I haven't been able to get in touch with them.
Speaking of Urbana, their radio table looks really nice. Looking over the blueprints, they managed to build the small, pencil-drawer that mounts underneath the table - very rare. The radio table mounts on a swivel, which I'll need an example of before I can get started building. The blueprints are not at all what I expected: the table is hollow and has a terracotta-colored linoleum covering on its top.
Lastly, Colin has asked for me to post another picture for him on WIX. He believes it to be a gun mount of some type but was hoping one of you might have more information. Colin is being nice enough to let us borrow his nose-gun mount, so kudos to him!
-G
http://www.gblume.com
Last edited by TheBigBadGman on Tue Apr 17, 2018 4:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Re: A Visit to Ray Moore and Lucky 13
Tue Apr 17, 2018 4:26 pm
TheBigBadGman wrote:It's kind of funny (and annoying) that the blueprints so readily shift back and forth from metric to fraction. In working on some of the door charts, I agonized over one mathematical conversion only to discover that it was the same size as the chart above - it had only been written out differently.
I'm really hoping that the word you were looking for above is 'decimal', not 'metric'. I haven't seen a metric dimension. And it's pretty much a one way shift. The early blueprints are fractional (due to their woodworking heritage?), and it looks like they shifted to decimal when a print got updated.
Re: A Visit to Ray Moore and Lucky 13
Tue Apr 17, 2018 4:50 pm
Yeah, my mistake.
I’ll go ahead and fix it.
(I should proof my stuff more before posting)
-G
I’ll go ahead and fix it.
(I should proof my stuff more before posting)
-G
Re: A Visit to Ray Moore and Lucky 13
Wed Jun 20, 2018 1:49 pm
Does anyone have any contact information for the guys who worked on My Gal Sal?
There's got to be someone left in Cincinnati who was involved with its restoration.
-G
There's got to be someone left in Cincinnati who was involved with its restoration.
-G