I Hate Drilling Stiffeners

I’m still trying to nail down a good time for continued wing skin riveting, so in the mean time, more ailerons.

But first, a little taste of how I like to walk the dogs. Or rather, how they walk me.

In the same vein as last night, I’m not really a big fan of drilling stiffeners. Maybe it’s because I’ve done it on the rudder and both elevators, but it’s just kind of boring.

You can tell it’s boring by my lame pictures tonight.

After drilling some stiffeners, a boring picture.

Halfway through the 32 total stiffeners, one of my #40 drill bits broke. Boring picture.

I labelled each stiffener with the aileron (right or left), side (upper or lower), and then 1 through 8 from inboard to outboard.

After about 45 minutes of that, I decided a nice small (15 minute) task would be to knock out the edge finishing.

Did anything assist me in that decision? Yes.

A pretty bad cut on my knuckle from dragging it across a skin edge. Ouch. (So far, this project has cost some blood and sweat. I’m sure the tears are on there way…)

All the edges edge-finished, and some nice round corners.

Here are both aileron skins and the four piles of stiffeners, all matchdrilled.

I may be done with drilling stiffeners. Who knows.

1.0 Hours. I bet tomorrow’s post is called “I Hate Deburring and Dimpling Stiffeners.”

(Actually I don’t hate deburring and dimpling stiffeners. I can do it inside, where the A/C is nice and chilly.)

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This entry was posted on Monday, August 15th, 2011 at 10:20 pm and is filed under Wings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to I Hate Drilling Stiffeners

Stefan says:

August 16, 2011 at 4:06 pm

I don’t know why, but the rollerblading videos are pretty mesmerizing. There’s another one around here somewhere too, where the dogs are running through the neighbors’ yards. It’s neat (especially since I’m not your neighbor).

(note to self: has my entertainment now become checking Andrew’s site for drilling mistakes & rollerblading videos? egads)
Andrew says:

August 16, 2011 at 6:55 pm

Yeah, I tend to put up lot’s of dog videos…it’s one way I keep the girfriend reading the blog. If it’s just deburring picture after drilling picture after deblueing picture. She gets bored. This way, she always reads them to see if little Jack and Ginger make it. This, of course, goes against a phrase I hear a lot: “I don’t need to read the blog, I live it.”