Sunday, November 28, 2010

Starting on the wings

It took a few days after the official semi-almost completion of the fuselage to get an actual start on the wings. The big issue was one of space. The fuselage needed to be moved to the back wall of the hangar to make room for the wing construction. I also took delivery of a second work bench from The Jackson Two now that they've moved onward and upward towards the finish kit. Their plane will soon grow its own legs and no longer need to sit on external supports.

The first thing I needed to do was verify that the spars would indeed fit in the alloted space. That coincided nicely with the first step in the plans, which was to cut apart 20 little angles of aluminum that will presumably have ribs mounted to them.



There's also a doubler that gets cut apart from its lesser half, gets clecoed into place, has some matched holes drilled through it, and returns to the parts shelf until we go looking for it again in Section 15.



As expected, the 20 aluminum angles get clecoed into place. Presumably I will be riveting them in pretty soon; it was getting dark and I needed to get back home.



On my next trip out to the hangar I will hopefully remember to bring my set of taps; I had to skip the step where the wing tie-down mounts get drilled and tapped because I had left the set of taps back in the basement shop.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your blog was a big reason I decided to take the plunge and build an RV-12. I would read it before doing the relevant parts of the tail. Then I got the wings - Oh no! You had not done them yet! So, no crutch...(well, there are other blogs...) But now I am 95% done with them (installing lights) and will soon begin on the fuselage. It will be fun to now read how you do the wings! Been there, done that, hope I didn't miss anything that I will see you do better! Thanks - Bill H

KLewis said...

On a side note .. may want to leave the blue plastic on when you trim some of the flanges on the ribs. They may get marred while sliding across the bandsaw "table". ( FYI )

DaveG said...

Kyle -

My ribs don't have any blue vinyl on them. They came in a big stack bound together with that clear Saran Wrap stuff. Actually, I was kind of happy about that. Until now, anyway.

DaveG said...

Bill -

Wow, that's a lot of pressure! I hope everything is going well enough so far that you don't regret taking the plunge. When you get started on the fuselage you can rest assured that I have blogged plenty of things NOT to do. Like, you know, making two right side fuselage skins...

KLewis said...

well...wrap them in blue plastic / we have plenty left over. hahahaha

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