Tuesday, September 30, 2014

The HS is back on!! - 4 hours

The replacement front spars arrived from Vans! Wow that's quick....wow that was expensive shipping!! Going to have to save those up and be more efficient with my shipping.

I started work on laying out the required notches and cut then. My pilot holes where pretty close. I'm still have a tab bit of an issue getting the holes started right where I need them to be. I tried to use a small punch (with push pressure only) give myself a start point, but the drill still walks a tad due to the #30 pilot hole being so close to the rounded web. In any case I used a small round file and sorted the holes out and finished off with opening them up to 1/4" with a unibit. I then cut the flanges with snips and then flattened the flanges out. I used files to slowly and carefully open the notches and fillet them. I cleco'd the spars to the skins to mark the location of the last rivet hole in the skin (next to notch)  and then used a circle template around it to ensure maximum edge distance. After all was done... I was extremely pleased with how nice the spars turned out.






I was done working in the garage so I retired to the basement and finished off de-vinyling the elevators. All of the skins have now been de-vinyled. I have to say that it was quite relaxing and enjoyable once I figured out the 700 deg temp setting, the right iron tip, and the right speed. I could sit in front of the tv and just work away.