So my main objective for tonight was to get the skins clecoed onto the right wing skeleton. But first I had to address some other concerns; namely the very real possibility of not having enough silver clecos. I’d done a sort of quick and rough estimate Sunday night, and it was looking like my supply would be marginal to get the right skins on. So my plan was to remove some of the clecos I had holding the leading edge together.
I couldn’t recall if I’d match drilled the left leading edge yet, but I was pretty sure I hadn’t, and I turned out to be correct. So I decided to go ahead and match drill it while it was thoroughly clecoed, then remove about half or so of the clecos. With match drilling complete, the only real purpose of the clecos would be to keep the assembly together in a minimal fashion.
But first I wanted to take a look at the leading edge rib flanges that attached to the spar. Last time I put the leading edge in place, it seemed like I had to pull a bit to get everything lined up, so I suspected that some of those flanges weren’t quite square. A quick check confirmed my suspicion, and a bit of work with the hand seamers fixed that problem. This time, the leading edge went on the spar and it lined up without any trouble. Match drilling went pretty quickly from there; the skin-to-rib holes were stupid easy, though the rib-to-spar holes required me to use a long drill bit instead of my usual reamer due to tight clearances.
Hey look, the left wing is back together again:
So I slid on over to the right wing and got to work clecoing. I’m pretty sure I said this when I did the left wing, but there are a lot of clecos here. I would estimate I spent a solid hour just on this task. I did the top skins first, then moved on to the bottom, working from inboard to outboard. I was down to the last few clecos when I noticed something wasn’t right. Oh, I see, the skin is interfering with the lower outboard arm of the wing stand.
Hrm, that’s a problem:
So I proceeded to remove all the clecos outboard of the third rib, which allowed me to pull the skin out of the way. I also had to detach the outboard spar ends from the arms so I could pivot the wing out of the way. Only then was I able to get in with a hacksaw and start cutting a notch in the arm. Some cleanup with the Dremel, and all was well again:
Of course, since I’d moved the wing around, I felt compelled to break out the plumb bobs again just to make sure I hadn’t introduced any twist into the wing while moving it. Everything checked out though, and now the wing is all set for match drilling…another night.
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Hobbs
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