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Here I am riveting the left leading edge. The leading edge skins are riveted to the nose ribs in a cradle. Later, the whole assembly is riveted to the rest of the wing.


Read on for more.

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Here is the right wing after drilling and clecoing the outboard leading edge to the skeleton.

The little wooden blocks that you see on the floor were placed against the rear spar to keep the straps from pushing against the main skins.

The cat keeps on coming down to see what I am doing. She is not going to be happy until she finally figures out what I am doing with all those clecos. Her main mission is to attack every one that I drop and bat it under the workbench.

I think I am going to be home for a couple of weeks at least, so I hope to make some good progress again.

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I got back from 10 days on the road late on 30 October and then attacked the outboard leading edge on the right wing.

I used a threaded rod with nuts and washers through the tooling holes at the front of the nose ribs to keep them from flopping around. The rod wasn't fastened to the jig - it provided enough stability as is.

Four nylon strap clamps did a great job of holding the skin tight to the ribs. Here you can see what things looked like as I started to drill and cleco the skin to the ribs.

Basically, you start drilling at the spar on the top of the wing, and move forward, pushing the skin down as you go. You want to work any slack out of the skin, pushing it around to the spar on the bottom. Then you trim the skin to fit properly at the spar.

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I put the second wing jig on Saturday 17 Oct 98.

The second time goes a lot quicker than the first, because you learn a lot from the screw ups made the first time, plus you don't need to spend as much time studying the plans.

I expect I will save quite a bit of time by building both wings at the same time, because as soon as I do a task on one wing I can do it on the second while everything is still fresh in my mind.

Tonight I will start drilling and clecoing the skins to the second wing.

I am going back on the road again for 10 days starting on Wednesday 21 Oct, so the project will go on hold again.

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Here is the left wing after drilling and clecoing the top skins to the skeleton.

Terry drilled the holes mid-span where the inner and outer skins meet. She wouldn't let me take her picture though - she was afraid some of her sisters might see her with a power tool in her hands.

I also got about one third of the bottom wing skins drilled and clecoed before stopping for the night.

It is great to finally see a really big part taking shape before my eyes!

The nose ribs (the bit at the leading edge of the wing, topmost in the picture) are only clecoed on, as they have to be removed later to allow the nose skin to be riveted to them.

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I got back from two weeks in Wichita on 7 Oct 98. I finished riveting the wing ribs to the spars on 8 and 9 Oct. On 10 Oct I started working on the wing jigs.

The wing jig consists of two vertical posts, with horizontal arms attached. The wing spars are clamped to the horizontal arms, and the whole thing is carefully aligned with levels and plumb bobs.

Originally I planned on reusing the jig I built for the tail surfaces (picture). Most people simply remove the cross member from the tail jig, and voila, you've got a wing jig. Well, fate intervened, and one of the vertical posts developed an impressive warp after I finished with the tail jig. I had already decided I wanted two wing jigs, so I could work on both wings in parallel, so I would have had to move the tail jig anyway.

I decided to use steel posts this time - jack posts usually seen in basements. Here you see the left wing in the jig part way through the leveling process. The two small posts under the rear spar are there because the spars sag under their own weight. The small posts hold the spars straight while the skins are being drilled on. Once the skins are on, the whole structure will become stiff.

I will put the jig for the other wing parallel to this one, to the right. I am waiting to set it up until I can confirm that the dimensions and wing support provisions I did for the first jig work OK.