This is the skin summary post! All skins at this point have been attached, some have been removed. First top skins are clecoed on, then bottom skins. At one point all skins were on both wings. Then it’s the old game of match drill, cleco shuffle, match drill, and then remove parts–except the top skins. […]

Tonight I was able to put the finishing touches on the wing stands. These were tough. There’s a lot of fabrication, measuring, leveling. I did not have proper levels, so I purchased a laser level, torpedo level, and line level. All these were helpful. My 3′ spirit level worked great for some tasks, but there […]

The picture does most of the explaining. The right wing was riveted together first. In all, it took about 2.5 hours to get all 100+ rivets set. Care is needed to avoid rivets that should hold until subassemblies are attached. Care is also needed, to ensure rivets go in the “right” way. I did not […]

Several days of scrubbing the ribs had me questioning my commitment to priming the airframe. Yesterday, I completed the scrubbing and mixed up a HUGE batch of primer. About an hour later, viola! I accidentally primed the leading edge ribs at the same time. This is jumping ahead a bit, but I think it will […]

First thing today was to finally decide on a location to put my wiring conduit. I kept reading blogs and posts but then stumbled upon this: That took the guess work out of it, and I went with their recommendation. After punching holes in all the ribs… All the hard work paid off today, just […]

The last three-four days has been nothing but deburring ribs. I finally finished late this evening, with around 10 hours of deburring and related activities. Next up is straightening the flanges, and fluting the ribs. I’m hopeful these steps are a little quicker, because I’d love to get this wing mocked up with some clecos. […]

Well apologies for the jump-to-completion here on the rear spars. I will get better at documents. Luckily, there is plenty of footage of these pieces and video is forthcoming. The construction was very familiar, and a welcomed return to aircraft building for me. I forgot how much I had missed these processes while on my […]