Build
Hands On.
Every glider on our flight line was built by someone. Most of them need ongoing work to stay airworthy. Build is the discipline of the shop floor — the welding torch, the milling machine, the fabric and dope, the wood and aluminum that become an aircraft. Real tools. Real aircraft. Real skills that transfer everywhere.
Three workshops. One aircraft at a time.
Build is not one trade. It’s three woven together — the structural work that gives an airframe its bones, the surface work that gives it its skin and its finish, and the machine shop fundamentals that turn raw stock into the parts that hold it all together. Every cert is a hands-on demonstration on an actual aircraft.
Structural Work
Wood, sheet metal, welded steel tube. The bones of every glider in the hangar. Working with the original materials and joining methods that built aviation.
Surface & Finish
Fabric covering, doping, corrosion treatment, paint preparation, and finish work. The skin and the protection that make an aircraft last decades.
Machine Shop
Milling, turning, drilling, riveting. Control rigging, landing gear assembly, instrument panel wiring. The fabrication work behind every part of a working aircraft.
Real airframes. Real restoration.
Build skills aren’t taught from a textbook. They’re taught on the airframes sitting in our hangar right now — donated classics that need the exact work the curriculum covers. Every fabric panel, every weld bead, every milled bracket lands on a real airplane.
The shop floor curriculum.
Build skills are the same skills that keep general aviation alive. Welders, machinists, fabricators, fabric specialists, finishers — these are the trades behind every certified A&P mechanic and every restored warbird. The Build discipline opens that door.
- Spruce and birch plywood structural work
- Aircraft fabric stretching, gluing, and doping
- Aluminum sheet metal cutting, bending, and riveting
- TIG welding of 4130 chromoly steel tube
- Milling machine and lathe operation
- Corrosion identification, treatment, and prevention
- Control cable and pushrod rigging
- Landing gear, wheel, and brake assembly
- Surface preparation, primer, and finish coat application
- Aircraft instrument panel wiring and bus bar layout
Every skill demonstrated. Every part signed off.
Earned in any order · All count toward the Build Master Award
These are the ten certificates in the Build discipline. Each is awarded when a qualified instructor or A&P mechanic signs off on demonstrated competence on an actual aircraft. The work is the test. The airframe is the witness.
An aircraft is the sum of every signoff.
Every aircraft that flies safely flies because someone, somewhere, did the work correctly. A weld that holds. A fabric panel that doesnt lift. A control cable rigged to spec. The Build discipline teaches that work. The certificates verify it. The aircraft that fly afterward are the proof.
If a part is questionable, it doesn’t fly. Period. The shop is where uncertainty gets resolved — not the cockpit. Better to scrap a part on the bench than discover the problem at 2,000 feet.
Show up. Pick up a tool. Start working.
There is no certification fee, no apprentice program, no waiting list. The shop is open on workdays and there is always something on the bench that needs hands. Walk in, ask what needs doing, and start.
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