Today I did spent quite some time on the broken strut. I will try to explain the surgery done in the next few pictures.
Ofcourse I wanted to make use of the original strut and therefore the idea of Spiros (@fiveten) did sound very good. Unfortunately the plastic was very brittle and I did not want to take the risk of damaging the original part further. I chose to reinforce the strut after glueing it back together. Making use of of evergreen which I glued in the front and back of the fraction.
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1. Evergreen reinforcement plates in the front and back of the fraction.
Next I did cut the evergreen so that it matches the dimensions of the strut.
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1. Cutting the evergreen to match the thickness of the strut.
Smoothing the evergreen was the next step so that the reinforment plates became "one" with the original strut.
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1. Smoothing the evergreen so that it becomes like "one" with the original strut.
After finishing the work on the nose landing gear, the main landing gear was applied as well. This time I was not worried about their strength, they appeared to be much stronger than the nose landing gear.
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1. After smoothing the nose gear, also the main gear was applied.
Once everything dried sufficiently, I had to perform the ultimate test ofcourse. First finding out if the nose strut was strong enough and secondly if she was a tail sitter or not. With my fingers crossed (just on one hand because I used the other one to hold the DC6) I put her on the main landing gear first. I could clearly feel that the nose wanted to go down by itself, so no tail sitter. Gently lowering the nose till the wheel touched the table. Luckily no signs of bending plastic and when I let her loose she perfectly stood on her own feet. I have to admit that this was a great relief.
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1. Carrying her own weight and not being a tailsitter.
This is how the nose strut looks at this moment.
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1. This is how it looks after reinforcing with, and smoothing the evergreen. Painted done as well.
