Round Strut Ends

[Sweet B]

Guys,

I'm building a set of the round aluminum "spec" struts. I believe the instructions say to heat and tap hammer, or something to that effect. I pinched the tube to maintain edge distance. I could cut and weld a seam to make it look prettier but before I put in the time and effort I was wondering if anyone has any pictures of ends of the struts?  any help would be appreciated.

[Sweet B]

UPDATE- Does this look close to what everyone else has ?

[cheto]

I have the same question. I've been staring at the XL plans trying to figure out what those strut ends are supposed to look like.
-Chet

[Larry H]

What I did was grind or cut out part of the metal so I could bend the metal to form a taper and more of a funnel on the bottom attachment which is much more narrow space than the attachments on the wing. I used a piece of small tubing that would fit the plans called for bolt. I welded that little piece of tubing to the end of my tapered tube. Then I wrapped thin maybe 1/8” strap over top of tube holding the bolt. Welded all of that together. I let the strap go down 2 or 3” then welded it fully. I’m not finished with cosmetics but here is one top end and one bottom end. Obviously the bottom end is much narrower

[Larry H]

Top end

[Larry H]

Top end of strut. I wanted to go up against the bottom of the wing with a rounded strut end so there would be plenty of clearance. I started by smashing the end of the steel tube into a taper. I cut out V-Grooves in both sides to accommodate keeping the sides flat. I welded that split together then added the little bolt pass through tube onto the end. I then wrapped over the top of that with the strapping.

[cheto]

Thanks a LOT for the pics. The strap-over-tube looks strong. I like it. I'm a little uncomfortable that there's only a single bolt through the aluminum strut. That's supporting a quarter of the load.

[Larry H]

Your welcome. There is two bolts holding the steel tube inside the aluminum strut tube. 180 degrees from each other.

[Larry H]

I just remembered that the wing attach fittings do not align perfectly with the landing gear attach fittings where the bottom end of your wing struts attach. In this picture I had to slight Vcut through this wing attach fitting
, set the angle then re-weld it back together. You can see the slight off set that was required for alignment.

[Larry H]

This is the bottom attach fitting of one wing strut where the landing gear also attaches. I was setting the dihedral and wing twist before drilling the hole for attaching steel inner tube to the aluminum round wing strut tube.

[Larry H]

After seeing my photo I took while building my landing gear or when I started my wing struts, I recall what I did. I thought I had found some tubing already the right size to fit the wing attach bolt but what I actually did was machine the correct size hole for the wing attach bolt called out in the plans through a piece of 5/8” solid rod I had. This particular part looks like one of my landing gear tubes. I made them the same way as the wing strut ends.  I welded that pre-hole solid to the end of the inner steel tube, ground it down then wrapped over that with the safety steel strap and welded it all together.

[Kamcoman77]

Look through Chuck's XL In Indiana build log He has photos of some nice looking strut ends.

[Larry H]

Kamcoman, where can we find a builders log? Are they incorporated into this site or found somewhere else?
Thank You

[Kamcoman77]

When you click on Forum at the top of the page, there is a builder's log section to view.

[Chuck in Indiana]

Here ya go. Making the end fittings starts on page 23..
https://www.eaglersnest.com/forum/index.php?topic=2197.330