With the rear spar completed, I began laying out the top wing skins. I located the j-stiffeners that I drilled earlier in the project as well as the wing walk doublers. I initially clecoed the doublers to the ribs, but realized that wasn’t helpful as the skin goes over them. I then use my trusty broom handle to remove the blue film off the skins and and start to cleco the skins to the wing. Read more
Category: Wings
Wing Ribs – Part 7
So as I was doing a last double check on things and getting ready to start riveting on the top skin, something didn’t look 100% right. I was doing the final check of the AN3 hardware to verify that I had torqued and installed torque seal on all the nuts when I realized that two of my wing ribs didn’t have any AN3 hardware installed. Specifically the 2 of the outboard most ribs. (See photos below).
[inpost_fancy thumb_width=”200″ thumb_height=”200″ post_id=”653″ thumb_margin_left=”0″ thumb_margin_bottom=”0″ thumb_border_radius=”2″ thumb_shadow=”0 1px 4px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2)” id=”” random=”0″ group=”0″ border=”” show_in_popup=”0″ album_cover=”” album_cover_width=”200″ album_cover_height=”200″ popup_width=”800″ popup_max_height=”600″ popup_title=”Gallery” type=”fancy” sc_id=”sc1534549605819″]
Rear Spar – 4
After getting some feedback during my recent Tech Counselor visit, I had a few items to address on my rear spar (some rivets that needed attention). I started off by re-checking all of the rivets on my rear spar to make sure they were in-spec. For those that were out of spec or “marginal” I went ahead and drilled them out or if they were not set enough I marked them with tape so I could hit them with the rivet gun. Once everything was drilled out, I had a few places where I scratched the primer. Read more
Rear Spar – Part 3
Ok, so first I’ll apologize as this timelapse is all over the place. Well, honestly I was all over the place as I ended up making a few errors as I have been juggling a few things.
Getting ready to rive the rear spar to the wing ribs I deburred and primed everything. I then began to cleco everything together and was trying to utilize my squeezer to set the rivets for the rear spar. Honestly, this didn’t really work all that well as I still was going to use the rivet gun for a sub-set of rivets. Also it was just plain difficult to get the proper angle to even come close to setting the rivets correctly.
After setting a few rivets, I realized I had not dimpled some holes:
Page 15-4: Step 3 – “Dimple the holes in the ribs lower aft tab and the holes in the W-1007A-L Rear Spar Web lower flange that correspond to the tabs.”
After looking at these locations to see if I could use the squeezer or some other method of adding the needed dimples, I realized the best solution was to remove the offending rivets attaching the rear spar, correct the oversight and re-rivet the parts.
- This is a great lesson to learn. Take your time and re-read the directions.
- You can fix just about any mistake and you will make mistakes.
- Removing rivets is a skill you really need to learn 🙂
Here is what you get after removing a bunch of perfectly good rivets:[inpost_fancy thumb_width=”200″ thumb_height=”200″ post_id=”629″ thumb_margin_left=”0″ thumb_margin_bottom=”0″ thumb_border_radius=”2″ thumb_shadow=”0 1px 4px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2)” id=”” random=”0″ group=”0″ border=”” show_in_popup=”0″ album_cover=”” album_cover_width=”200″ album_cover_height=”200″ popup_width=”800″ popup_max_height=”600″ popup_title=”Gallery” type=”fancy” sc_id=”sc1532462583210″]
With the rivets removed and the proper parts dimpled, I re-rivet the rear spar to the ribs again. This time with less errors and in a much more comfortable position!.
I then begin to prep the rear spar for the right wing by removing the blue film and drilling the doublers. I also fabricate the doubler with the cut-out for the pushrod using a few different tools. Honestly the file is still my “go to” tool for this kind of stuff.
With all the doublers fabricated, I attach everything to the rear spar so I can match drill.
Wing Ribs – Part 6
First, this update is a little late in being published. Don’t worry, I have been making progress and should have more updates shortly.
With some work on the leading edges done, I moved back to the wing ribs to get my right wing ribs attached. First I assembled the ribs on the spar, then started to mark and drill the holes for the conduit attachment pieces.
After moving the spar to the workbench for better access, I began to attach the tie-down bracket to the spar. Only had to drill out a few rivets due this time before everything was perfectly attached. 🙂
Next I began to rivet on the ribs to the spar. This is easy enough to do solo if you are careful. As I got closer to the wing root I was limited on physical space. Feel free to laugh as I squeeze around to get the last few rivets set.
With the rivets all attached, I then started to install the AN3 hardware attaching the ribs to those stepped spar doublers. I’m not sure I got it on camera, but I basically put the hardware on just tight enough to hold at first. I came back later with a torque wrench that could measure in the in-lb range needed to set the AN3 hardware to spec. A little dab of torque seal to help mark what hardware got torqued and I’m all set.