Wing Construction

June 1
	Tonight I drilled out the jig pin holes to receive drill bushings. I also finally hammered my first rib sort of into shape.


June 2, 3
	Major visual progress this weekend. It was a rainy weekend. Not good weather for Honey-dos, perfect for working out in the garage. First, after looking at my first attempts at creating nose ribs, I decided that I would never get the quality ribs I wanted if I had to hand cut each rib. So I spent part of Saturday creating a routing jig to help make all of my nose ribs uniform.
	The proof would be in my test pieces. I readied the blanks and loaded them into my newly formed jig. One thing I noticed right off the bat with this setup. The outer support ring is perfect.
	Perfect if you don't have any blanks locked into the jig. Once you load up the jig, the outer ring is now lower than the inner template by .025; more if you are cutting multiple blanks at once. The answer was as simple as a few pieces of scrap aluminum. For my test I used one shim under each corner. I'll increase the shims as I cut more ribs at one time.
	Here I am loading up the nose rib router jig.
	Very, very pleased with the results.
	With the router method proven to my satisfaction. I put my tools down for the day. The PBR was in town. So off I went to see the Bulls beat up on the cowboys for the night.
June 4
	Sunday dawned another beautiful drizzly day. I pretty much made a bee-line out to the garage once I had downed my morning coffee.
	I put the new jig to work. I couldn't spend all day out there, but I did manage to cut almost half of the nose ribs today.
	I even managed to film a few short videos of the routing process and the forming of the rib flange. If my technique is poor and you have any tips for me; I can be reached through rivetbangers.com or the Bearhawk mailing list.
	routing ribs video (2 meg) click on image to download video
	forming flange video click on image to download video
June 5
	Tonight I cut and routed another 10 nose ribs. Same method and results as above :)
June 6
	I have an EAA meeting tonight. So, most likely no work will get done. I'll probably squeeze in some plans reading or something though.
June 7
	I finished cutting all of my rib blanks tonight. Of those blanks I've got 4 shaped. and 26 routed. That leaves me with 16 rough cut blanks to drill and finish cut. Then it's on to deburing and bending the flange. It's also time to start thinking about creating the template for the middle ribs and making room for storage of these ribs as I complete them.
June 8
	Tonight I put the router and rib jig to use and finished cutting the last of the nose ribs. I also used my scotchbrite wheel and deburred about half of the nose ribs.
June 9
	I spent about 1 hour out in the garage tonight. I separated all of the routed ribs into two piles (right and left) and proceeded to hammer the flange on a few of the ribs
June 10
	More of the same. Surprise surprise, another rainy day. I had a bit of running around to do, but managed to hammer out another 10 ribs.
June 11
	Today I finished hammering the flange on the first batch of 23 nose ribs. I also routed the radius on the second side of the master form block so I can start hammering the next set of 23. Once the routing was finished. I also started fluting some more of the ribs I had created the flange on yesterday.
June 12
	I fluted one, count it one rib tonight. Eh, it's one less rib to do tomorrow :).
June 13
	No fluting tonight. Instead I started hammering out the second set of 23 nose ribs. 10 down 13 to go. The only tricky part was making sure that I was flanging in the right direction. I solved this by strategically placing notes to myself right on the form block.
June 14
	I cleaned up a bit tonight. Collected Aluminum shards and stuff like that.
June 15
	I wouldn't expect anything to get done this weekend. Maybe Sunday if at all. I'm heading out for a weekend of Dirt-biking with my friends from Dirtrider.net. We'll be spending the weekend riding the trails at Paragon adventure Park. Lots of Rocks and mud and rocks, and roots, and rocks. Should be a good time. All work and no play makes PK a dull boy!
	WoOT!!
June 19
	I survived my weekend of dirtbiking. If you care to read up on how it went, you can visit my Swamp Yankee Paradise Blog. As for building today; I will be at work until past midnight so no work will be done. I plan on resuming construction in earnest tomorrow afternoon. Well, whaddya know? I actually made it out to the garage last night after all. I got home right around 11:30pm. I went out to the garage and measured the chuck on the drill press. I needed to know how big it was so I would order the correct hole cutter.
June 20-21
	Note to self: if you plan on hammering flanges DO NOT hammer them after the Mrs. has gone to bed. Lets just say she wasn't happy! But, I did get another 10 ribs flanged
June 22-25
	Wednesday through Saturday morning were a blurr. Way too much time spent at work. I haven't tallied it up yet, but I worked 20 hrs just on Friday into Saturday. Once I woke up Saturday morning I headed over to Captain John's house to check out how he was doing with his RV-7. I brought some of my ribs along so I could get his critique on my work. I would say I got mixed reviews. John, as usual, had lots of information for me. I took in most of it, but I was still kind of foggy from my last work day. I really like having people within driving distance that I can show my work to and get feedback. It's the only way I'll improve the quality of my work. Thanks John.
June 26
photo credit: Frank Nowak	I had volunteered to work a booth for my Local EAA Chapter 1363. Since I knew I would be there all day. I brought my plane along with me. I stuffed a dozen or so ribs into a back pack along with my fluting and seaming tools and headed to the show. The weather was horrible. Most of the day was spent dodging raindrops. Surprisingly, there were still a couple of thousand people in attendance. A couple of the aerobatic pilots tried to put on some sort of show for the crowd, but mostly it was all static displays and overpriced food. Since I didn't know too much about the planes we had on display I set myself down on a chair and began fluting and seaming my ribs. I was shocked at how many people would stop by for a few minutes to ask questions. Seeing someone actually working on a project really seemed to draw people in toward our booth if for no other reason than to figure out what was going on. So, not only did I get to spend the day working on my project, but I introduced a number of people to the idea of homebuilding. Weather aside, it was a good day.
June 27
	The nose ribs have all had their flanges hammered. I've got a few more than 1/2 left to flute and seam. From there it's on to the lightening holes
June 28
	No progress. Tonight was a "clean up the garage some more" night.
June 29	I'll give you three guesses what I did last night. Yup, more fluting. The pile is getting smaller. I'll be off on vacation for the next week so I may or may not update this site. I will definitely be working on the plane though.

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