My upper was made by mating a cast wheel from McMaster-Carr with a 3.5" long 1/2" wall 4140 tube which was shrunk over the cast wheel. I think I pressed an aluminum core inside the ID of the cast wheel that had the bearing bores already machined into them. That was mounted to an arbor mounted in the lathe that picked up the bearing bores for turning the OD. I used a similar method for all the rotating parts -- a core with 4140 tube on the OD for the working surface. The bearings are common to all those assemblies so the same arbor stayed in the lathe until they were all profiled and polished.
The upper is fairly light and has low inertia so it doesn't skid unless the pressure is very low and the panel is moved quickly. I did have to balance it with stick-on wheel weights because of the cast wheel's features not being symmetrical. I can remove/install it easily by myself.
I had bought tires for my bandsaw from him and asked if it was possible to get small/wide tires for the EW. He did a few prototypes for me for free but I don't remember him accepting any money for them.
The first parts I made with my EW were for the Collings Foundation's B-17. They were doing a rebuild after an accident and wanted a 'stinger tail' to replace the incorrect turret tail the airplane had been fitted with after it's fire bombing career was over. The problems were; 1) I had zero experience using the EW, 2) The airplane was in PA in I was in FL, and 3) I didn't know how to build a buck that would serve to make the four panels needed. Being young and fearless I just went for it anyway.....
The panels were made with plenty of overlap and by some miracle they fit. The airplane was recently lost to an accident but the parts I made survived. This work was done before I had really finished the EW and it was not yet painted. All the shaping was done on the EW.
Most recently I did some work on a Howard DGA-8. The wheel fairings were formed using hard female tooling and water pressure. I did the welding of the halves, etc but there was little EW work on those. The intersection fairings were from a different model Howard and were heavily damaged, The EW was put to use a lot on those fairings -- first to repair them and then to fit them to the DGA-8 landing gear. One thing I learned was that when you are using the EW on very soft aluminum the metal stretches way too readily. I made a plastic upper so I could smooth without imparting any additional shape.
In between I have done a few small projects but I still have a bunch to learn about the EW and metal shaping in general.
