Drilled Right Wing Ribs to Main and Rear Spars

September 29, 2010

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Tonight, I drilled all of the right wing main ribs to both spars. Not a lot of commentary, so I’ll just get to the pictures.

After drilling the middle two rear spar holes for each rib, I moved the clecos into those holes and matchdrilled the upper and lower holes.

Rear spar, looking forward.

Same with the front (although the clecos are in front of the main spar here).

You can just barely see the clecos in the 2nd and 3rd holes of each rib.

Also, I have a question about some of the flange-to-flange holes. Here’s what I wrote on the forums:

Hello everyone.

I was working on drilling my main ribs to the main and rear spar last night, and the instructions say “drill all of the rib to spar attach holes.”

Then, they have you take everything apart, deburr, prime, and then rivet the ribs to the spars.

What should I do for the flange to flange holes? (Circled in green below, but there is one more on the ribs for the lower rear spar flange).

If I leave them as is now, I’ll be match-drilling them with the skins later, but then I won’t be able to deburr the holes (because the ribs are now riveted to the spars).

I could run a #40 bit through all of these holes and deburr before assembly. (I could also dimple the rear spar ones, since they will eventually be dimpled to accept the skin dimples.

Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance.

Here's the same picture, but smaller, with green circles.

We’ll see what they say.

Here's a better angle.

Then, I pulled off the rear spar.

(What a sad moment. I have had this clecoed together for a week or so, and every time I go in the garage, there’s a wing! How cool is that? Now, I’m back to rib deburring (or catching up on the left wing). Not as exciting as a wing skeleton.)

After taking the rear spar off.

Everything taken apart for the night.

I can’t believe that took me an hour.

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Posted by Andrew

Trim Tab Fitting

July 1, 2010

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Okay. Today was a pretty productive day. I had taken everything apart, then realized I still had some more fitting to do on the tab, so I put it all back together again. Before that, though, I thought and thought about what to do about the two holes on the right side of the picture. These are for the fiberglass tips, and they are supposed to be matchdrilled later, after the counterbalance skin is installed as a lap joint underneath. How can I deburr parts that are riveted together if I drill through both? Maybe it’s not a big deal, but I decided to drill them to #30 now (for #6 screws).

Two holes the right before drilling...

...and after.

Then, I was thinking ahead about the safety wire trick you have to do with the hinge pin. Why not drill that now, so I can deburr before priming?

I drilled this just larger than 0.060, which is one of the biggest safety wire sizes.

Next, time to deburr and dimple the left elevator spar.

Me dimpling.

And after everything was dimpled, a nice picture down the spar of my blurry recycling bin, golf clubs, and motorcycle jack. (No motorcycle anymore, but the jack comes in handy to lift the corner of a car when a tire needs to be taken off for one reason or another.)

Spar! (I'm tired, so we are down to one word captions for the day.)

Another shot of the same.

Dimple! (Wouldn't it be annoying if I everything I wrote ended in an exclamation mark?!)

After edge finishing the two hinge reinforcement plates, I shot them with primer.

Primed!

Then, my attention turned back to the tab.  I’ve clecoed the elevator half of the tab hinge back in, and on the right you can see my drilled riblet!

Drilled riblet! (Okay, I've had enough of the exclamation points.....!)

Here’s a better picture. I basically drew a line perpendicular to the hinge line up from one of the holes along the trim spar, then spaced them at 1.5 and 3 inches. That spaced everything evenly, and gave me plenty of edge distance all around.

Don't look at my edges, they aren't finished yet, but you get the idea.

Then, I stuck the tab on and inserted the hinge.

As some would say, "Easy Peasy."

Other direction, just for kicks (not as much deflection due to cleco interference, but again, you get the idea).

Because I bought a longer section of hinge to replace my bad first attempt, my hinge pin was long enough to actually fit (Van’s says they will send you the real one (because it needs to be longer than 18″) in the finish kit.

I got to bending.

After more bending, I ended up with something like this.

Ooh, isn't that pretty! The safety wire hole I drilled earlier is in the middle there, and will allow me to safety wire this hinge pin to the spar so it won't COME OUT IN FLIGHT!

Then, I figured out how to do video. They speak for themselves, but keep in mind that while my gap is intentionally small, I still need to edge finish, which will open them up.

Another video, this time a little closer. You can see I am pushing and pulling left and right to make sure there is no interference even with the small amount of play in the hinge. I think I am okay, but this will probably open up a little after edge-finishing.

Two hours of late-night-hinge-pin-bending bliss.

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Posted by Andrew

More Drilling, Deburring, Scuffing and Dimpling

May 9, 2010

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After we got back from my first Pilots N Paws rescue, I was excited to keep working on the airplane.

I needed to start on the tip rib and counterbalance rib, so I needed to get the holes in the counterbalance to final size (#12, for a An509 screw).

I had some trouble awhile back with drilling the counterbalance holes to final size, and I don’t have any boelube, but i figured any lubrication would work better than none, so I poured some air tool oil into the holes and tried again.

This time, it worked much better. (I still got stuck a few times, but I didn’t come to a grinding halt like I did last time.)

Here's the counterbalance after drilling to #12.

I clecoed the counterbalance skin back onto these two ribs, inserted the counterbalance, and matchdrilled through those to make these holes in the ribs.

Nice job with the blurry picture, right?

Next up, deburring.

There's my trusty deburring bit.

Then scuffing.

Bottom rib (counterbalance rib) is scuffed.

After deburring and scuffing the tip rib, I dimpled all but the last 2 holes on the top and bottom of the rib.

The two non-dimpled holes are not shown here. I'll have to get the countersunk steel plate out to get those.

Next, I clecoed the counterbalance skin on the right elevator skin and marked with a permanent marker where I wanted to scuff and prime. Some of the edges here have to be broken to make the skins seam from spar to coutnerbalance skin a little smoother. More in a later post.

Above this line, the right elevator skin overlaps, and will need a coat of primer.

Then, out with the trusty blue tape.

Taped and ready for scuffing.

Then, I pulled out my #8 dimple dies (don’t have #10 dies, which are the correct dies for a #12 hole and AN509 screw) and dimpled the counterbalance skin. The countersinks on the right are the correct size. I need to figure out how to dimple the skin on the left a little more.

After this shot was taken, I screwed the correct screws into the assembly and tried to tighten them down to dimple more, but I didn't want to strip anything, and it wasn't really going to work.

I’m going to research how people did this without #10 dies later.

No rivets set, but a good hour on the plane.

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Posted by Andrew

Right Elevator Stiffener Drilling and Dimpling

April 14, 2010

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Another fairly boring night with right elevator stiffeners, but the end is near (end of right elevator stiffeners, not the whole airplane), so I’ll keep plugging away.

My setup for drilling stiffeners. I used the cordless today so I wasn't making too much noise. I'm almost done with this side.

I matchdrilled every hole except for the last hole (closest to the trailing edge.) Some of these last holes are both pre-punched, and just need to be matchdrilled to final size, and some are missing the holes in the stiffeners. You have to use the skin to matchdrill the stiffener.

Down the right elevator.

I unclecoed most of the stiffeners and then re-clecoed the stiffeners (just at the ends) with the elevator off of the table so I can roll it over to drill.

Ready to flip over and matchdrill those last stiffener holes.

One picture of the last hole.

The hole at the end of the "3" is the one I need to matchdrill.

After that, I used a thick sharpie to trace the stiffeners to help with future devinyling. Then, I flipped the whole thing over to start on the other side. Same process, though.

About halfway done with this side.

Then, uncleco from the table to flip over and get the last hole.

Unclecoing from the last hole.

No big deal for you, but I marked all of the stiffeners correctly. The right elevator in the background is sitting upside-down (I just typed right-side-up, and had to change it. See, I’m still confused). Anyway, the ones on the table are on the top surface of the elevator, but the one in the foreground is marked the top (“Top, A”), but is actually the longest bottom stiffener.

This should be "BA" for "Bottom, A."

After finishing all of the stiffener drilling, I took them inside to deburr. After all of the deburring, I grabbed this shot of the placemat on the kitchen table. (Don’t tell the girlfriend. I got it cleaned up.)

Aluminum shavings galore after deburring. This is kind of a stupid picture, but I already uploaded it, so I'm not going to hold back.

After deburring, I rubbed down the surface that needed to be dimpled, (not the perpendicular surface, and I definitely didn’t do any edge-finishing).

Deburred and scuffed, ready for dimpling.

And I would like to draw your attention to the following three dimples. Don’t they look lovely?

Looks like a professional dimpled these holes.

It was the girlfriend!

Girlfriend dimpling. (She kept giggling after each one. And after each time I said "dimple." There may or may not have been red wine involved.)

Anyway, she made it about 8 dimples before getting “bored” (I think her hands hurt, too). Back outside, I found this little guy.

he's pretty small, but looks kind of scary.

No real identifying marks, but I’m sure someone will be able to help out.

Anyone have any ideas?

As if I hadn’t had enough drama for the night, Ginger came out, grabbed some wood, and took it inside to chew up all over our staircase landing. Here are some of the remnants.

It's better than her eating the window sills. Or the banister. Or our patio chairs. Or my soul.

Anyway, I spent a few more minutes with the Permagrit block rounding the edges of the stiffeners. Next up, edge-finishing with the scotchbrite wheel, scuffing, cleaning, and priming. Then, same dance with the skin and the backriveting!

An hour and a half. Boom shakalaka.

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Posted by Andrew