Work, family, and other obligations have conspired to cause progress on the 2900 to slow from turtle-speed to a more molasses-like pace. Besides, the progress that is being made is enough to put me in the nut house.
Work on the rods continues (where have I heard that before?). Not a work session goes by that Ed doesn't muse about the rods wondering if they truly are made from 303 stainless or something a bit tougher. I have finally finished machining in the groove around the main rod ends. That primarily consisted of me standing at the CNC mill and pushing a button and watching the machine go s-l-o-w-l-y round and round while keeping things thoroughly lubed with "juice", adjusting the Z axis, punching the button and doing it over, and over, and over again. I know, it could be worse so I just need to shut up and get on with it. (If nothing else this does reinforce what a genius Kelly Johnson really was. He and his team had to develop from scratch all kinds of new means and methods for fabricating and machining titanium [which I am told makes this stainless seem like aluminum!] in the making of the A-12/SR-71.) I suppose that the picture below should be celebratory in nature as it is the final cut but it just means that we are moving on to the next step in rod building. Cutting the same sort of groove in the 2 main rods are next followed by a side-profiling and slotting of all of the other rods. Hope I'll be done with this part by Christmas. Seriously.......
2 years ago
