Right wing main ribs riveted to main spar

Finally time to make some finished parts!

 

Right wing ribs clecoed on

 My buddy Brian stopped in to buck rivets - made the process much easier

 We started off slow, and managed to put some rather large smileys in two of the rivet heads. I'll drill these out, but the good news is the rest of the rivets went in without a hitch. 2 out of 63 ain't bad.

 Down the rabbit hole...

 Ribs permanently attached!

Attaching the rear spar will be a bit more interesting. We flexed the ribs out of the way quite a bit in order to shoot squarely, after I realized that I never ordered an offset rivet set. I'll be ordering one of those, and I suspect it will get a lot of use wrapping up the wings. It'll still be tight quarters, though.

 

Wings: 3 hrs



Left wing main ribs deburred, primed

We're enjoying our brief spring here in central PA, and the goal Saturday was to finish deburring the left wing main ribs. All the notches needed scotchbriting, and then they all needed to be scuffed, washed, and primed.

The stack below is FINALLY ready for washing!

 Primed the insides

 And outsides

 I spent a lot more time on this today than I expected, but at least they're DONE!

 

Wings: 7 hrs

Left wing conduit run drilled, rear spar deburred, leading edge ribs deburred

Beautiful weather again today, so out to the shop we went.

 

Girls helped strip blue vinyl from the left rear spar in preparation for hole deburring.

 Which my lovely assistant did, in addition to deburring the root flange holes on the left leading edge ribs.

 She also caught a cool action shot of metal shavings flying everywhere (or as she calls it, Shop Glitter).

 I deburred the notches on the left wing main ribs and ran all leading edge ribs over the Scotchbrite wheel.

 Not a lot of clearly visible progress here, but it moved us closer to being able to prime & assemble these parts! Just need to Scotchbrite the webs & flanges of all ribs, flute the leading edge ribs, and then we'll be ready to go.

Piles of unfinished parts are getting smaller!

 

Wings: 3 hrs

Right wing ribs primed, Left wing match-drilled

It was great to be home for the first weekend in a while! I continued deburring wing ribs, and tackled drilling conduit & wire runs for the tips. First a sophisticated template to mark the drilling location with a spring-loaded punch,

 Then drill to #40

 Followed by #30 

 And then upsized with stepdrills

 To final dimension of 3/4" (below) and 5/8" for the tooling hole near the rib root.

 My buddy Chris came over and got all the glamorous work: washing, drying, & priming ribs.

 Ready to go!

 Not bad for a squiddie.

 While the primer dried we match-drilled the left wing main ribs.

 Rear spar first,

 Followed by the main spar.

 While that was happening I drilled the tooling hole in the main spar for the stall warning device up to 3/8".

 Deburred, bushing installed. Too easy.

 Prime(d) rib!

 Chris's boy Naish heard there were power tools and had to get in on the action.

 We also got the leading edge ribs match-drilled & deburred, the main spar hole deburred, and Chris knocked out all the hole deburring on the main ribs. This stuff goes much faster with help!

We had an awesome day, got a lot done, and are ready to rivet the skeleton of the wing. Almost time to skin that beast! Can't wait to have Chris & family over again to help.

 

Wings: 7 hrs

Wing rib deburring

After some time on the road I dove back into the pile of main wing ribs - only 2 to go for the left wing!

Wings: 1 hr

Left wing tiedown installed, left wing skeleton assembled!

Last weekend I worked on the left tie-down bracket, having received the replacement bolts I ordered from Aircraft Spruce. Brian Judge also came over to help deburr some of the right wing main ribs. And then we got distracted fixing up Erin's car...

 

So we were back at it this weekend, got the left tie-down bracket bolted on!

 Then I worked on the replacement rear spar reinforcement plate, edge-deburring it last week, clamping it in place this week:

 Match-drilling:

 Countersunk, deburred, scuffed & cleaned, ready for primer:

 And then Sam came out to squash some rivets!

Since I had some extra hands and the weather was nice, we assembled the left wing skeleton:

 Like mother, like daughter:

Sister act...

 And don't worry Adam & Rochelle, your ribs are together (and right behind the gas tank - you're welcome, Adam!).

 Parting shot - look closely at the lightening holes...

We accomplished a lot today in pretty short order; of course, once these holes are match-drilled, we're back in the deburring doldrums. Ah well, we're not far from hanging these puppies on the wing stand - and time to skin 'em! Crazy.

 

Wings: 4 hrs

Right main spar deburred, right skeleton match-drilled

 I test-fit the tiedown brackets to make sure everything lined up.

This let me get to know my new torque wrench, although it started a bit rocky. The "click" was more subtle than on the wrench I had borrowed from a co-worker, resulting in me overtightening a couple of bolts and cross-threading one of the nutplates.

With no way to back out the bolt, I had to use a cutoff wheel in my Dremel to cut the bolt flush with the nutplate, and then cut the nutplate down as seen below.

Fortunately I didn't damage the spar or tiedown bracket, however I followed that masterpiece up by breaking two of my pin punches trying to remove the rivets. S$F!@#

I replaced the nutplates, came to terms with my wrench & got the right tideown bracket fully attached. Finally. The left is waiting on replacement bolts that I ordered, but is partially attached.

An a more upbeat note, I got all main & leading edge ribs match-drilled to both spars on the right wing!

 And the mandatory peekaboo shot...

Front

I got all the parts disassembled, the right main spar deburred, and the girls helped me remove the blue vinyl from the rear spar to ready it for deburring & priming.

Sometimes I feel like this blog is just a chronicle of my mistakes, but I have to admit it was satisfying to take the ribs off the spars for the last time.

 

Wings: 4.5 hrs