Section 15 – Outboard Leading Edge

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Worked some Friday and yesterday on the right outboard leading edge. Had to install the ribs in the LE skin and cleco so I could locate and drill the J Stiffiner channel. This completed, I disassembled everything and dimpled and primed.

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Nutplates Nutplates Nutplates today. The long pieces are the joiner strips that join the outboard leading edge to the inboard leading edge (fuel tank). The other piece are access panels and landing light brackets. The small pieces are painted black because they’ll be visible when looking into the landing light cavity.

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Section 14 – Top Wing Skins

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After completing the right wing skin, we moved it over to the wing cradle and got to work on the left wing.

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The left wing went much faster than the right did because we had a pretty good rhythm down.

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Here’s a time lapse of our weekend’s worth of work

Hard Eight BBQ

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So Dad was in town and I could use a bit of flying time so we took a trip to Stephenville TX for some of Texas best BBQ. Hard Eight BBQ is a nice 10 minute walk from the KSEP and well worth the stop if you’re in the area. They used to have self serve golf carts at the airport for the short trip but I’ve heard that they are no longer there for one reason or another but it’s not a bad walk and you’ll need to work of a few calories.
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Section 14 – Top Skin

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Dad is in town and we’ve had a good couple of days working on the right wing. First we finished riveting the inboard top skin to the ribs and spar. The we dimpled the outboard top skin and riveted it as well. We estimate that we drove about 600 rivets over the past two days.
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Below you can see the J-Channel box stiffeners inserted in the ribs and riveted to the wing skin.
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Here is the outboard aileron bracket riveted to the outboard rib and aft spar.
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And here’s a time lapse video of our work today:

Section 15 – Outboard Leading Edge

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Now that I’ve got some workbench space again I started working on the leading edge. First step was to cut a couple of cradle V-blocks out of plywood to hold the leading edge skins while riveting.

Next it’s time to work on ribs again. So back to the same routine as earlier: drill holes to final size, debur both sides of the hole, debur the edges as well as the lightening holes, straighten the flanges so they’re 90 degrees to the rib web, then flute the rib flanges so the rib is straight. That took about 8 hours over Friday, and Saturday.
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I snuck out for a few hours on Easter Sunday and worked on polishing the nose portion of the ribs on the scothchbrite wheel so that the bent tabs are more rounded than faceted. Then I started dimpling. Here’s Ashley doing a bit of dimpling on the DRDT-2. More dimpling later.
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Re-arranging the workshop

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I think I’ve done all I can do riveting the wing skins on until Dad comes down in a few weeks to help with riveting. I thought it would be a good time to build a wing cradle and rearrange the garage a little bit. So I stole Tim Olson’s wing cradle design and spent the weekend building one.
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Next I rearranged the garage a little to put the cradle up against the wall and give a bit more workable workspace. I’ll probably need to put the workbenches back together again when Dad comes down to rivet top skins but I’ll deal with that then.
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Section 14 – Top Skin

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My friend Rick came over on Saturday and we got started riveting the inboard top skin on the right wing. We got 3 rows done.
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After Rick left I finished with the wing root nutplates and clecoed the outboard skin to the wing for safe keeping. I think it will stay there until I get some more riveting help show up.

Section 14 – Top Skins

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Ashley and I had started on the wing walk doublers this week. This morning I got them finished and the top skins countersunk at the wing walk. Then I dimpled the skin and got it primed along the joint lines. I’m going to do the same as the left wing on this one, only prime the joint lines but this time I’m using the Napa 7220 grey primer instead ov the SEM. $6 per can instead of $20.
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Freshly dimpled skin ready for rivets…tomorrow
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And a short time lapse of me dimpling

Section 13 – Rear Spar

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Ashley visited friends in Houston for the weekend of March 8-10 so I had a good bit of time to work on the plane. I finished getting the aileron and flap brackets prepared and assembled.
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Then I got the rear spar prepared and riveted to the wing.
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THen last night, Ashley and I got the right wing skins and wing walk doublers out of storage and started preparing them. More pictures on that later.

Section 11 and 12 – Right Wing Spar and Ribs

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Ok, I’m guilt of not updating here for a while. I have been working but since I’ve moved on to the right wing, I don’t feel like I’m plowing any new ground here, just redoing what I’ve already done once on the left.

I ordered a new countersink cutter since the original one was cutting oblong holes. I assume it was dulled from all of the countersinks on the left side. While I was at it, I went ahead and got a couple of different styles to see if I could keep it from chattering as much. I got the traditional 3-blade cutter from Avery Tools and also a 1-blade cutter from Cleveland tools. I like the 1 blade cutter a lot but it’s pretty agreesive…gotta be a bit careful.

After getting the new cutter, I finished countersinking the bottom holes on the spar and riveted all of the nutplates. Next, I got the right side ribs prepared, primed, bolted, and riveted to the wing.
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That brings me to tonight where I spent about 1.5 hours getting the aileron bracket plates prepared and primed. I’ll rivet tomorrow.