Finished up deburring the 40 sized holes on the upper and lower flanges of the wing ribs today. After deburring all of the holes, each one was dimpled. I couldn’t use the DRDT-2 for the dimpling of the ribs so I used the hand squeezer. I mounted it to the workbench so I could hold the rib with one hand and dimple with the other.
So for each of 28 ribs, I have now:
deburred the edges
fluted the flanges to straighten the rib
final drilled the holes in the flange (around 45 per rib)
Third day of working on wing Ribs. Lots of deburring and fluting. Below you can see a completed wing rib with the flutes in the flange. These are done to effectively shorten the flange and pull the rib straight. It gets warped by the manufacturing process and this is the method to straighten it.
Additionally, every edge has to be deburred which consists of running either a deburring tool, or a grinding wheel over the edge and then polishing it with a polishing pad. This includes the insides of the lightening holes. 20 completed, 8 to go.
Continued work on page 12-02 today by deburring, straightening and fluting more wing ribs. I’ve finished 10 so far, 18 to go. Priming will come after that.
Started work on Section 12 yesterday. Started by building a fixture on the workbench to hold the Spar upright on the workbenches. Then separated and deburred and primed all of the various W-1029 parts. I then started deburring the wing ribs. This will be followed by fluting to make sure they’re straight.
And just to show how exciting all this work can be… here’s a time lapse
Good day’s work today going through page 11-03. I finished countersinking the left wing main spar. After countersinking all of the nut plate attach rivet holes and the skin attach rivet holes, I primed the countersunk portion of the hole by spraying primer then wiping it off of the flat part of the spar flange.
After the primer dried, it was time to install about 60 nutplates, each with 2 AN426AD rivets. The lower flange, I used the Main Squeeze hand squeezer. I had to drill out a couple of rivets, one because it didn’t set flush, and one because I wasn’t paying attention… see below…
Ultimately, they all got successfully installed.
For the upper flange, I used the pneumatic squeezer. It’s a very powerful tool and requires a good bit of focus for me. I was pleased with the results, I had to drill out two rivets that didn’t set flush but it went much faster and less muscle power.
Here’s a video of me installing nutplates, first with the hand squeezer then with the pneumatic. Then I countersink the attach screw holes deep enough to allow the dimpled 0.032 wing skin and fuel tank.
Not a lot of visual progress worthy of pictures today because I spent the day countersinking the main spar. First I did all of the nutplate attach rivet holes since they will need to be of a depth to accept a rivet head. Then I adjusted the countersink cage to go a little deeper and started on the skin and rib attach holes. These holes will need to accept a dimpled skin so they need to be countersunk a little deeper. I have a LOT more of those holes to go but hopefully I’ll be able to finish them tomorrow.
Like I said, not a lot of visual progress but this at least shows that we can fit a car in the workshop garage
Started working on the wing today. Finished page 11-02 by fabricating some J-Channel and match drilling it to the spar using the holes on the spar as guides. I found that cutting the J-channel with a Dremel tool a little long then cutting to final length with the band saw worked best. I left the blue plastic on the J-channel since they will be set aside until Section 14 and installed with the wing skins. I’ll debur and prime at that time too.
I finished the overhead storage for wing skins and wing tips. Now I need to deconstruct the shipping crate. I’m considering using the wood from the spar crate to build a shelf on the garage forward wall to store the long pieces. Tomorrow.
With the inventory complete, we turned back towards getting the workshop ready. Task for today is lighting. I ultimately need to get an electrician out to run some more power and a dedicated circuit for the air compressor. In the interim however, I hung an 8 foot florescent fixture that I’ll plug into an outlet.
Ashley and I got the fixture hung and wired to power but only 2 of the 4 bulbs lit. It was time for dinner so I decided to call it an evening and consult the internet for wiring advice. It appears that the grey and red wire needs to be wired into the white power input…who knew… We’ll take care of that tomorrow.
A few more things remain to be done before I can really start working on the wing. My goal is to have everything ready so I can get going by Christmas Eve.
Finished the inventory today. There are a couple of items back ordered as noted on the inventory sheet, the clear lenses for the Nav lights and the landing/taxi lights. There is also a part number VB-11 missing but upon consulting the folks on vansairforce.net forum, that’s nothing but some template drawings for a wing stand. There’s lots of info on how to build the wing cradle so I’m not worried about that.
Thanks to the great work of Ashley on the label maker, most of the items from the hardware submit have a nicely labeled home.
