Finally back out in the garage again today. I’m glad I got my portable air conditioner set up out there, because the Houston summer is starting to kick in…
For my first trick, I wanted to work out some good means of storage for the wing skins. Back in Georgia, I just drove some finishing nails into the wall and hung the skins by the rivet holes. It worked, but not particularly well. God forbid I needed to get the wing skin in the back of the stack…I’d end up messing up a couple nails along the way, and the whole thing was a huge operation.
I had some scrap lumber sitting around from building the workbenches, and after rolling ideas around in my head, I came up with my idea. Basically, it’s just two units with a vertical piece that leans back a bit, plus a bottom lip for the skins to rest on. I put them on the floor a good distance apart and the skins just naturally rest on them. It’s kind of like a two-piece easel, I suppose.
With that out of the way, I finally unwrapped the main spars from their bubble wrap cocoon, still left over from the move. I have one more row of fuel tank attach nutplates to do, but today I decided to instead go with the more unpleasant task – rib deburring. It’s tedious work, but it needs to get done.
So I sat down and managed to deburr all the leading edge and tank ribs for the left wing. The end of debarring is in sight now; all I have left are most of the main ribs for the left wing. Once I finish those, then I’ll be on the road to putting the wing skeletons together, though first I’ll need to figure out what I need to do for wire runs to the wingtips and such, as well as clean and prime those ribs. Still, it’s good to be working again, and also to know that soon I’ll be hitting on of this building phases where, after a long period of not much getting done, suddenly I have assemblies that look like actual airplane parts.