Tail Feathers Construction

I received my Wag Aero balanced tail group kit yesterday. One thing that was disappointing was the Wag Aero part numbers do not match up with Piper part numbers. I guess I will have to order the Wag Aero drawings.

I have some questions for anyone who has built up Cub tail feathers.

1. Which welding method is best for the tail group? O/A? TIG? MIG? I recently took a welding class at the community college and have been practicing O/A. I also became fond of MIG w/gas. I was planning on O/A but seems MIG would be ideal for the tail group.

2. The elevator control horn has a washer that goes inside the tube doubler. Does that washer go flush on the end of the doubler to act as a stop for the control horn assembly?

3. Any other building tips for the tail feathers?

Thanks for any help.

Bugs

I would suggest jigging them together on a long table with the leading and trailing edges conected so you have a matched set. It kind of sucks if you discover later that somehow despite your best efforts the second one came out of a single jig just a tad bit different than the first and they just don't quite want to fit together.

Also practice on some scraps of the same thickness before you take the torch to those precut pieces and break the practice pieces apart to make sure you are getting good penetration. I would use O/A or TIG but I haven't spent any real time with a MIG setup.

They are both the same so you could build them both in the same jig.

Wag-Aero sells a J3 Cub parts catalog that should have Wag-Aero parts numbers on it.

I think your results will be better with O/A; you are going to need a torch to normalize your TIG welds, anyway, and with those itty-bitty tail group clusters, you're really just doing a bunch of large tack-welds, anyway.

Drew