Wing Top Skin – Part 3

Finally jumping back to finish off the left wing. With a little assistance from my wife, we turn and move the wing to my workbench to begin prepping the skins for final assembly.

After deburring both the wing skins, I begin to deburr all the ribs. I ended up getting one of the “in and out” deburring tools online and used it for a good section of the wings. I’ll admit that it did a decent job without taking too much material off. I may use this for more of the build going forward.

I then move the wing so I can install the 4 rivets that I didn’t install earlier between the spar and ribs. I spoke about this in the previous post regarding the top skins as the plans were not clear on these rivets.

Next, I started to dimple the ribs, J-stiffeners, and the wing skins. Using the sawhorses, some 2×4 and felt mats allowed me to quickly get through the dimple process without any drama. I’m actually starting to get better working in the somewhat limited space I have.

I then mount the skins, J-channel, and wing-walk stiffeners onto the wings. Next I have to verify my countersink cutter is properly adjusted so I can countersink all the holes common with the wing-walk stiffeners. This makes a complete mess and lots of aluminum shavings!

Finally I take the time to mark anything longer than a 3.5 rivet on the skin so things will go faster once I get an assistant to help me rivet. I’m looking forward to using my new back-rivet sets to see if I get any better results vs the last time.

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