Status of the construction of the Gluex Forward Drift Chambers

Currently under construction at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, Virginia, the full GlueX detector is designed to study gluonic degrees of freedom through the production of ``hybrid'' mesons with exotic quantum numbers. To accomplish this task the detector requires high acceptance and reasonably good resolution for both charged and neutral particles. The core of the detector is housed within the bore of a 2.0 Tesla solenoidal magnet. Charged particles emanating from the target for angles greater than about 20 degrees with respect to the beam line will be tracked with a straw-tube detector (the Central Drift Chamber). Forward-going charged particles will be detected using the Forward Drift Chambers (FDC). I will describe the design and construction of the FDC and present preliminary resolution measurements.