Preparing to work on wing ribs - 7 hours

I managed to get a healthy amount of time in on the build, but unfortunately it was spent on building the home made tool to straighten ribs that everyone seems to use on the build logs. I ran and picked up more primer, a small torque wrench and a bunch of supplies at home depot to build the tool. It took about 5 hours in total to build the tool and clean up the saw dust.

I then started to write part numbers on the ribs and remove the stickers. Some stickers came off really well, but some required some good ol' fingernails and goof-off.

Completed the Rear Spars - 5.5 Hours

Finally off from work for the holidays, I intend to put some serious work into moving forward with the wings. The rear spars were ready to rivet, so off I went. I started with the fork doublers. I did the best I could to set the AN470 rivets. I find them a tad more tricky to set than AN426 rivets as it is difficult to get the squeezer straight on the rivet. I ended up drilling out and re-setting about 8 rivets in all. but overall I am satisfied with the work. I then completed the rest of the doublers. Pretty easy to do as there are not many rivets that get put in at this time.



It took me some time to rivet because I made extra sure not to set rivets in holes that are to be left open.

New tools arrived

Finally after waiting nearly two months my order from Avery Tools had arrived. Back in Nov 8th I placed a fairly big order since Avery Tools was going out of business. I ordered a tandem alligator squeezer, a pneumatic cleco gun, a larger selection of flat rivet dies in various thicknesses, SafeAir pitot mast and skyview plumbing kit. I was super excited that it was finally here.   

The cleco gun is nice, first impressions is that it will come in extremely handy for work on the skins. I gave the new squeezer a try. It has tons of power and a bit better trigger than my C frame squeezer. I can see that it will not be as easy to adjust the dies for setting rivets, and it will be a tad tricky to make sure that it sets rivets straight, but it sure is cool!

Primed the Rear Spar - 2.5hrs

Not much to report. I prep'd and primed all the rear spar parts.

Working on Mike's Stewart S-51

Mike came over this evening to work on his HS rear spar for his Stewart S-51. He had a look oever my work and I ran through some of my work. It was nice to get his eyes on my work to verify if I am doing things right.

Prep'd the rear spars - 6 hours

Learning from previous experience, I match drilled the rear spar doublers to the rear spar with the drill press. progress was a bit slow, but it was precise.
 
I then transferred the aileron holes to the doublers. As per the instructions I used a unibit to remove as much material as I could. I then tried to use files to finish the holes but progress was extremely slow and I had much material to still remove. I dug out the dremmel with a small sanding drum which worked excellent. At first it removes a lot of material, but as the drum wears down so does its ability to remove material allowing you to easily fine tune the cuts.


As soon as I was close enough, I cleco'd the doublers to the rear spars and very carefully used the dremmel to match finish the holes.
I drilled and de-burred the parts.

Completed tie-downs and started rear spars - 6 hours

I began riveting the nutplates on the tie-down assembly. It went fairly smooth and I am happy with how it turned out. I now see why the use of compact nutplates is not mainstream. Not the easiest to rivet...not impossible,  just no room to work with. My friend later told me that a trick he uses is to use a punch and a back-rivet plate to set them. Good Idea!


I then bolted them to the spars with little incident. I wet set the bolts with primer on the shank. I did notice that one hole was a bit tough to screw in due to the one nutplate being tight. I will have to account for this when torquing.

I then began to trim the rear spar doublers. I sketched the dimensions shown on the plans out on a piece of paper and then transferred to the one doubler. I cut the doubler and used the sanding station to fine tune the piece. I then used that one double to transfer all the cut markings to the other pieces. I then trimmed all the other pieces. Once nearly complete, I cleco'd the pieces together and then finished them with the scotch brite wheel. They are all a perfect match.