Carlton Builds my Wall Hanger Prop

First off, I'm something of a packrat, but get special inspiration when I see something potentially interesting just lying around. Jeff had these unairworthy, red-tagged prop blades off a Baron or Bonanza over in the corner of the maintenance hangar and gave them to me, probably glad to get rid of the clutter. All maintenance hangars are staffed by packrats (you never know ...) but sometimes Mrs. Packrat has to see some cleanup progress and so that was that.

As usually happens, things like this sit around for awhile, waiting for the little grey cell filaments to light up and when they do you have to have the right people in the right place at the right time.

Enter Carlton Hawkins, master machinist, airplane builder and all around great guy. Carlton knows how to do stuff.

My idea was to join the 2 prop blades to display as a wall hanger in my barn/workshop. Doing what I really didn't know how to do, I routed out a couple of sockets in the opposite sides of a block of wood but couldn't figure out how to secure the blades. When I took my idea to Carlton, he immediately came up with a better solution: Shrink fit the flanges of the blades inside a steel cylinder, much the same as old car engine flywheels are fitted to crankshafts, among other things. Brilliant. All we had to do was find a steel cylinder that would fit around the prop flanges and so on and so on, far beyond my skill or imagination.

Carlton is, among other things, a superb scrounger. He found a hydraulic cylinder at a junk yard for $5. The outer diameter was five inches and the inner diameter was four inches. He needed a few thousandths less than 4 1/2 inches inner diameter so he simply milled off what he had to. THAT was something to see, precision work at its best. When steel cylinders are heated, they expand. When prop flanges are chilled in ice water, they contract a little, much the same as aircraft builders chill their rivets when bonding metals. As the heated cylinder cools, it contracts; as the prop flange warms, it expands, making the fit very, very firm indeed.

So here we go. Carlton has already fitted one blade in the cylinder. Fitting the second blade is more a two-man job since so many things have to happen at the same time. My job is to hold the second blade in a bucket of ice water until the steel cylinder is heated, then jerk it out, dry it off, line up the indexed pitch markings so the prop won't look out of whack on the wall, and slide the cold blade into the hot sleeve. Simple. Until then, I just have to stay out of the way.

 I'm not real good at staying completely out of the way...

 When the cylinder was cherry-red, Carlton secured the torches and had me position the prop blade a couple of inches above. He stood by with a mallet and a block of wood in case the fit needed a little persuasion. It didn't.

 Everything came together just as he planned, and within a few seconds, the blade was firmly secure.

A little welding to attach a back plate to secure the prop to the wall, a couple of roll pins for insurance and presto, that's how you make a nice wall hanger. Simple, see?

Thanks, Carlton. You're the best.