The Stirling Aircraft Project

[andy_pennington]

Hi, I'm Andy, and I am a representative of a small charity "The Stirling Aircraft Project" which is aiming to recreate the forward fuselage of the RAF's first Four-Engined 'Heavy' bomber from the second world war. There are none currently existence, all were either scrapped or otherwise destroyed after the end of the war.

I am not a CNC machinist myself, but have been developing my skills in Fusion 360 to re-engineer parts that we are missing. We would love to hook up with hobbyist CNC machinists who would be willing to help us by manufacturing small parts for us at low cost in order to allow us to eke out our budget.
We generally need relatively small numbers of small parts, and commercial rates tend to push towards the production of hundreds or thousands of parts before the costs drop significantly.

So my hope is that there might be a few people who would like to help with a charitable project, and meanwhile would be able to enjoy the challenge of machining small aluminium (and some steel) parts for this (what I consider, at least!) deserving charity. We also will be requiring some wooden formers to be cut from 22mm mdf when we start manufacturing the fuselage components for flanging purposes.

The aim is to use as many original parts as possible, but to remanufacture where suitable parts are not available. the forward fuselage will hopefully be re-united, once completed, with the aft fuselage sections which are in store at the RAF Museum reserve store, in Stafford.

http://www.stirlingproject.co.uk/

Andy Pennington