Going mad!

Wednesday 27th August 2008. 1hr.

Fitted main wing ribs to both spars.

Dorothy is away this week, taking her mother on a short holiday so I am trying to make as much progress as possible. However, things did not go my way this evening.

You would think that it would be simple to put marked parts back in their marked positions but the main ribs would not go onto the spars as per the markings and the plans. Just before starting, I had had a phonecall from my sister, who lives nearby, to say she would like to call by, so I knew I did not have long and this may have contributed to the confusion. To try to sort it out, I fitted the ribs to both spars in case ribs had got mixed between them, even though I thought I had kept the sets apart.

In the end, I just left it there and tried to forget it while I had a great chin-wag with Fanchea (my aforementioned sister). She was suitably impressed with the results of our interior re-modelling project and not at all interested in the plane, which suited the moment perfectly.

Edgy

30th, 31st July, 1st, 2nd and 3rd August 2008 20hrs 45min

Prepared edges of main and leading edge nose ribs for both wings.

This was a complete head-wrecker! Pure monotony! The only way to get through it was to put the shop radio on and do it methodically. Normally, I find that talk radio or music lessens your concentration and can lead to mistakes. However, for this job, it was exactly what was required because brain-power is a distinct disadvantage for such a repetitive task.

There are 30 main wing ribs (in six different flavours) and 16 leading edge nose ribs (4 flavours) to be done. I am lucky, I didn't have to do the tank ribs as Evan Johnson has done them for me. That would have been another 12 or so.

The routine was to:

• Set the flanges to 90 degrees with the flanging tool.
• Straighten the rib using the fluting tool
• File the long edges of all flanges with my big file
• Use small half-round and 'rat's tail' files for the edges of all the notches and corner cut-outs.
• Deburr all long edges using a combination of my two deburring tools.
• Deburr the inside edges of the lightening holes
• Sand the edges in all notches with very fine wet&dry paper
• Polish the long edges (and some corner notches wherever possible) on the Scotchbrite wheel.
• Polish the lightening hole edges with a small Scotchbrite wheel on a die grinder.
• Repeat 46 times

There is no way either deburring tool was going into the small notches without making things much worse. I just had to rely on moving the sandpaper around to knock off any burrs in these areas.

On average, it was taking nearly half an hour for each rib, though I broke it down into a series of sub-operations and ran through the set several times. This was to get a rythm going by having a shorter cycle to repeat.

Luckily, there are not many half-hour operations in the project that you have to repeat 46 times. Anyway, it's done now and won't need to be repeated as all the ribs for both wings have been completed.