Left wing skeleton work - 10/12/2011

Oh boy, today was a very productive day. Thanks to the help of my neighbour Jacques. An extra set of hands really speeds things up.

I was getting behind on work for the left wing so we concentrated today on bringing the left wing in the same state as the right wing.

We started the day by rivetting the 2 remaining unrivetted ribs to the main left spar. Setting 1/8" rivets can sometimes be a pain in the butt. This time, it went smooth. We drilled out some but no disasters.

On a final inspection round over all the rivets, I decided to drill out 3 more because of some damage on the manufactured head. It probably wasn't needed but you start knowing me by now. I'm a precision freak.

Next task of the day was to cleco and rivet the left rear spar to the skeleton.

I had to use 2 -9 rivets in stead of -8 on the inboard rib connection for the doubler plate. One of them was probably not necessary, but on the top one, I enlarged the hole while drilling out a badly set rivet. The -9 rivets set nice and straight without bending.

Then we proceeded with hanging the left wing in the jig. This is where the fun part starts again because this is where you have to make the whole structure level and twist free. (did you notice the cynism in that sentence ?)

Unlike last time, leveling the wing went really fast. Some minor adjustments first for leveling "et voila"...

Level lateral inboard, middle and outboard and level logitudinal across that spar at all position.

First the twist read 2 inch 16/32". Since on the other wing, the distance from wing to plumb bob was 2 19/32" I decided to move the structure a bit.

After some fine tuning, came to the readings below

outboard: 2" 19.2/32"

middle : 2" 19.2/32"

inboard = 2" 18.5/32"

That's consistent with the same deviation I had on the right wing. Here it's even less then 1/32".
I'm pleased with that as it is within the 3/32" tolerance.