05 July 2013

Wings: Leading edges. Ribs cut, skins dimpled.

As I wait until I can corral help to rivet the top skins to the left wing and the arrival of some bucking bars for the right wing's inboard aft rivets at the rear spar over the doubler and fork, I started the outboard leading edge.  Back to working on ribs:  Deburring, final drilling, fluting, dimpling, etc.

The three inboard-most ribs have part of the aft sections cut to accommodate the main spar's forks.  The plans call for the builder to cut four of these ribs.  Here I am lining up a cut for W-1009-2L.


Here's a great example of how the stretching of the aluminum around the dimple can aggregate over many dimples to deform an entire piece.  I don't have a picture before these splice ribs were dimpled, but at that point they were very close in shape to what the plans diagram shows on the left.  The right is what happens after dimpling that thin material!

   


Because most of my 3/32" clecos are holding the top skins down on the left wing...


  ...I ran out of clecos for fitting the left outboard leading edge together.  And, as you can see, I also ran out of worktable real estate. So, on the floor it is for now.  In addition to more clecos, I'm waiting for a #10 jobber to drill out the holes for the stall warner (plan to use that with an AOA sensor...I like redundancy).

Tip:  When cleco'ing in the ribs into the skin, cleco the fore-most holes in each rib first and work your way aft.  If you cleco the aft-most holes, you'll have less freedom to adjust the rib to get its holes to line up with the skin.

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