Cotton's Law

[ArchiveBot]

Cotton’s Law

Posted: Sun May 12, 2024 9:49 am

by flyguy0609

Cotton’s law of home building states that " The purpose of the hobby is to buy tools". The first corollary to Cotton’s Law is " The quantity of tools will always exceed the available storage." or “Tool Organization is futile”.

Any other observations on home building?

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Re: Cotton’s Law

Posted: Sun May 12, 2024 10:01 am

by Bryan Cotton

Excellent - another one is “it will be done next year.” Believe it long enough and sooner or later it’s true!

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Re: Cotton’s Law

Posted: Sun May 12, 2024 6:41 pm

by BobDz

You only need 200 clecoes.

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Re: Cotton’s Law

Posted: Sun May 12, 2024 7:05 pm

by WaiexB22

No matter how long you procrastinate hoping to save on shipping charges, as soon as you place your order to spruce or sonex or jegs or whoever…you will inevitably need something else from there right after you place the order.

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Re: Cotton’s Law

Posted: Mon May 13, 2024 2:07 pm

by DCASonex

flyguy0609 wrote:Cotton’s law of home building states that " The purpose of the hobby is to buy tools". The first corollary to Cotton’s Law is " The quantity of tools will always exceed the available storage." or “Tool Organization is futile”.

Any other observations on home building?

Not enough storage space for tools only means that you next investment will be in a bigger shop. Last three moves, shop has gone from 350 sq, ft. to 850, to current 1,150 sq. ft.

David A.

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Re: Cotton’s Law

Posted: Mon May 13, 2024 2:11 pm

by DCASonex

BobDz wrote:You only need 200 clecoes.

Probably adequate if that is 100 each of each of 3/16" and 1/4", for the 1/8" and 3/32" sizes better at least double that.

David A.

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Re: Cotton’s Law

Posted: Sat Jun 29, 2024 6:21 pm

by flyguy0609

To paraphrase from the responses above,

Cotton’s Law states:

“The purpose of the hobby is to acquire tools.”
1st expansion. The general theory: "Said acquisition occurs in three phases, #1. Purchase of tools to assemble the “hobby”. Phase2, Acquisition of tools to create parts assembled in Part 1. Phase 3 Go whole hog, and get the tools used to make the tools used in Phase 2. 2nd expansion, the special theory, states that the tool requirements grow as an exponent of the phase number. Mathematically : F(x) ^n, where F(x) is a function of the complexity of the hobby and n is the phase number.

I’m ready to make the Haj OSH.

[JKS]

This was in my face-book feed

[ampzapper]

Another thing I’m finding out:

Some of the tools you acquire for building an aircraft will invariable be the perfect tool for a project at home but will be in the hangar. The desire to use the perfect tool will delay the project until it is retrieved or another duplicate tool is purchased.

[Bryan_Cotton]

Helps to be walking distance from your hangar. But I do have some duplicates in the spirit of your observation!

[Bryan_Cotton]

I’m bummed out but it was a nice morning and I went flying. Very bumpy out. I planned to do a short flight, check for oil leaks (bad ones, not normal anti-corrosion) and then go somewhere. The approach and landing were hairy. Really gusty. The crosswind was really at the limit of what the airplane could do. Checked the latest METAR:

Holy cow - was only a 9 kt direct crosswind on takeoff and 17 kts was not predicted.

Whoops - wrong thread, but that’s ok.

[GJWS]

There are soul twisting moments during every build when you wonder why you are in a dark, cold and damp workshop at one in the morning with a wrongly bent bit of metal. I’m not promising this will light, warm or dry your workshop (or even straighten the metal) but it might help!

• “Measure twice and cut once” was never more true with a kit - there is not a lot of spare material to make a mistakes with so really do measure twice - to be sure - before cutting.
  On important stuff with all the positions of bulkheads, strakes, spars and reference centers - have an assistant cross check your work.

• Clean the shop after EVERY session

• Remember your last flight. The next one is your light at the end of the tunnel.

• Old Chinese proverb say - “If in doubt - read the instructions!”
  Drawings and Manuals really do tell you how to do it! (well usually)

• If it is all going wrong - walk away and take a deep breath and start again later.
  If you have wet paint in the mix - wipe it all off with a rag before walking away!

• While you have walked away - sort your tools and small parts

  • it will make the next job go easier.

• While you have walked away - clean the shop -
  you will find that lost part you have been looking for all week under the pile of filings…

• You can’t put it right later or cover it up with paint - it will look even worse.

• Invite your neighbours for a show and tell - early on in the build.
  Once they know what you are doing you are less likely to get grief during noisy operations.

• No matter how perfect the weather - and even if you had a “show and tell”.
  Don’t start riviting before 9.00am on a Sunday morning

  • unless you live on your own in the middle of nowhere.

• Clean the shop - again!

(Adapted from my kayak build at Building the Roy Folland Sea Wolf and Sea Lion)

[Kevin_Conklin]

“If you’ve got time to lean, you’ve got time to clean.”

Regarding measuring twice, on important things that are difficult to measure, I’ll measure a few times until I am certain it is correct. Then go home for the night and sleep on it, and recheck it all the next morning.

And if in a worst case scenario, I discovered https://www.onlinemetals.com/

They sell 6061-T6 in any form factor/sheet size/thickness/extrusion you need and they service the aerospace industry so don’t care that it is being used in an aircraft. I needed to replace an aft fuse longeron, and that piece of angle extrusion was too long to ship (other than by truck), but OnlineMetals has warehouses around the country and you can go pick up whatever you need. Price for what I needed was reasonable.

Warehouse locations: Seattle, Portland-OR, Los Angeles, Toledo, Dallas, Atlanta, Wallingford-CT

[ddeford]

@Bryan_Cotton - I took your advice and found a well-priced, used pancake drill adapter on eBay, as well as a small pack of assorted 1/4-28 stubby bits to go with it.

The adapter needed some maintenance. There were two gears that were binding every other rotation, so I pulled out all of the gears and bearings, cleaned everything, and re-greased everything and assembled the gears into the same locations. The binding was still happening, so I swapped the position of two of the gears and that fixed it!

As a test, I up-drilled these holes in the aft spar tunnel assembly in situ and it worked incredibly well. Thanks for the tip!

[Bryan_Cotton]

Awesome, they are great tools! Well done on the tuneup!