Friday, October 5, 2012

Finally - Winging It!!

The wing boxes have been opened in earnest and the hardware sorted and placed into parts boxes. Amazingly, there is not a lot of hardware for the wings … the flaperon is the only moving major component … so compared to the empennage kit, there are not nearly as many loose parts. The drawings/instructions were perused a few times and then added to the empennage drawings.
                                        Adding the wing drawings/instructions behind the empennage drawings.

The plans start right out with riveting parts onto the spars … wanting to prime parts first, I decided to forge ahead and file the rough edges then separate all the parts that needed a trip to the band saw.
                                    Filing parts to remove the burrs left from the sheering process at the factory.
                                Using the band saw to separate rib clips … and there are plenty of them, 20 in fact.

                                         Filing flaperon hinge brackets where the Scotch-brite wheel can’t reach.

Because our area is forecasted to head into a cold snap for the next four or five days with lows in the 30’s and highs in the 40’s, I decided to make a major push to process as many parts as possible so I could have a large primer session today. The Akzo epoxy primer is for temperatures above 55 which will prove to be problematic this winter.
                                   Feverously deburring and prepping parts for primer. Using the 1” Scotch-brite
                                  wheel on one of the 20 rib clips that can be seen in the bottom of the photo.

Everything worked out and I was able to prime today while the temps were in the mid 60’s. Finished up just prior to the beginning of the rain preceding tonight’s cold front. At any rate, I should have enough parts to get through a few days of building. Sadly because of the cold front moving in, I did not have the time to Sanchem any of the parts, especially external parts such as flaperon brackets. It would have been a nice touch but in the grand scheme of things, really not worth holding the project up for over a week in the hopes of another warm day to prime. Hopefully, later next week I can get another primer session in for the rear spar and some ribs if and when the temperatures pop back up into the 50’s.