Daily Archives: October 12, 2013


Wings 1 (5.0 hrs)

Ribs.  Holy cow there are a lot of ribs!

Here are the ribs prior to unwrapping from the plastic.  The first thing I did today was mark all the ribs with a marker and then remove all the little stickers with the parts numbers on them.  They tend to leave a sticky adhesive behind that gums up the scotchbrite pads, so I usually remove that with some goo off.  I did the same today.  With this many ribs… even that took awhile. 20131012-191023.jpg

Here are all the ribs after labeling. 20131012-191031.jpg

Same ribs after all of the flanges have been straightened and deburred.  I can see how this takes awhile.  5 hours later and I still have to deburr the lightening holes!  As you can see, Squire is thrilled by deburring!20131012-191041.jpg


Wing Spars 11 (1.0 hr)

Today I finished all of the prep work on the wing spars except priming and riveting. I used my new countersink to finish countersinking the tie down brackets.  I deburred the spars themselves, scotchbrited the remaining parts, and dimpled part of the spar that is hard to dimple after the reinforcement fork is installed.  Priming is somewhat time consuming, and I want to do the biggest batches possible to save time.  That being the case, I set the parts for the spars aside, and began work on the wing ribs.  I’m only going to prime when I absolutely cannot continue work until I do.

On the left you can see my new #40 countersink compared to my #30 countersink.  The #40’s that broke were of the same style as the #30 shown here.  You can see why its weaker.  I’m not sure what the advantage may be to the style on the right, but I prefer the new stronger countersink.  It seems less prone to chatter too. 20131012-190853.jpg

Here is Squire with all of the spars behind him. 20131012-190903.jpg