20' Samson stage 2
Posted: Fri Sep 13, 2019 2:33 pm
Finally got the tail mounted on the 20' open gear Samson. You sure do discover all the weird foibles when re-assembling these old beasts--like having to tilt the tail in weird ways to slip under castings and such. One of the weirdest: On the lower tailbone where it bolts to the head casting...takes 8 bolts, 4 on each side of the tailbone. All the bolts on one side were 1/2" and all the bolts on the other were 7/16" (per the holes in the casting, as cast). No physical reason I could find for this and a bit of a pain to find out when you are hanging off the top and have all your bolts already laid out.
Stage 3 of getting the blades on coming in about a month. It'll make one heck of a showpiece for the museum when done. It's nice to have it low enough that people can actually see the details rather than what they normally see on top of a tall tower. Though it's rebuilt to mostly running condition, everything will be (is) fixed and we added some structural improvements to withstand wind-loads in this fixed position. That added structure is primarily hidden behind the tail sheet and will be mostly hidden on the windwheel.
Upper tailbone is all new of significantly heavier material--3/16" angle instead of 1/8" and a 1/4" tie plate along the bottom instead of the original 1/8".
Stage 3 of getting the blades on coming in about a month. It'll make one heck of a showpiece for the museum when done. It's nice to have it low enough that people can actually see the details rather than what they normally see on top of a tall tower. Though it's rebuilt to mostly running condition, everything will be (is) fixed and we added some structural improvements to withstand wind-loads in this fixed position. That added structure is primarily hidden behind the tail sheet and will be mostly hidden on the windwheel.
Upper tailbone is all new of significantly heavier material--3/16" angle instead of 1/8" and a 1/4" tie plate along the bottom instead of the original 1/8".