Cessna turnbuckles on a Beech?

These are the turnbuckles for the wings. I had the steel parts cadmium re-plated. The small turnbuckles are used on the fuel tank straps. There are two steel straps per tank; one turnbuckle on the top part of the strap and one on the bottom strap. The large turnbuckles are used on the diagonal braces in the fuel tank bay.

I am missing one of the barrels for the small turnbuckles. The thread size for the small ones are 8-36. I have taps and dies for this size, so I can manufacture the missing barrel. I was also missing one for the large turnbuckle barrels, but a search though my stash of turnbuckles, (everybody has a stash, right?) turned up one of these; thanks Dad. Maybe it came from his 1934 Cessna Airmaster.

The thread size for the large turnbuckle is an unusual size that I had never encountered before; 13/64-30. A search on the internet found one reference to an owner finding this size turnbuckle in a older model Piper. The overall size of these turnbuckles are similar to the modern ones with 10-32 threads.

This image is part of Beech drawing B17100. As you can see, these turnbuckles are Cessna parts. I guess this should not be too surprising since the first Staggerwing was built in a corner of the Cessna factory, 1932.

Later model Staggerwings, starting with the C model, had a plywood bottom in this tank bay and thus did not have the diagonal braces in this bay. My Staggerwing has one tank in the lower wing. There is a plywood bottom in this lower wing tank's bay.