Monday, January 28, 2013

LH Leading Edge

I finished the LH leading edge! It's even attached to the spar! The rivets on the very leading edge were a little difficult to reach by-myself but after some stretching and muscle pulling, I managed. I then clecoed the leading edge onto the spar with some rigged up support and drilled the rib holes out, deburred, detached, vacuumed out the FOD and reassembled. The riveting part was really easy since most of the rib rivets are blind and the rivets that attach to the spar could installed with the rivet squeezer.

I also built a stand to hold the wings. It isn't on wheels since I didn't have any extras around the shop and I don't want to struggle with it moving while I rivet the upper skins on. Maybe I'll get some wheels later, but for now its good. The stand will work well for me. It can hold both wings but for now it will hold one and the table will hold the other until the skins are installed on both. This will allow me to work on both wings without having to move them.

Date Time
23 1.0 rivet LH leading edge
26 3.0 rivet leading edge to spar
27 3.0 build wing stand

The shop is really crowded despite how ginormous the panoramic pic makes it look.

















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3 comments:

  1. AnonymousFebruary 4, 2013 at 9:03 PM

    Are you polishing the LE after putting it on? It looks amazingly clean and smooth. Like the wing stand too. I'm just a little ahead of you, LEs are done and I'm almost ready to seal up the tanks and pray they don't leak. Haven't attached the LEs yet because I'm doing the duckworks first - will do while the last bit of proseal cures. Dave Leonard RV-10 #41373 (BigD at VansAF website...)

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    1. Justin TwilbeckFebruary 5, 2013 at 8:58 AM

      Dave,
      No polishing, they just came out that way since I had the LE in the cradles and the mushroom set was taped. I'm really happy with the way they finished. I discovered that having the air as low as possible and pushing the rivet gun and bucking bar together as hard as possible makes for a pretty smooth surface. Most of the load from the gun then goes into the rivet and not the aircraft structure....a learned skill I wish I had from the beginning :) How long did the tanks take you? I'm kinda dreading them.

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    2. AnonymousFebruary 5, 2013 at 3:54 PM

      Looking back at the log I've spent 68 hours on the tanks so far, and all that's left is to fit the aft inner rib, run the vent line and then put the back baffle on. Even with going back and forth between left and right I've still had a couple of days where no real progress is made while things go from tacky to workable. just to put that in perspective, the wings up to that point (slow build, of course) have taken about 140 hours; wing kit arrived Dec 6th and I started working on it (after inventory) on the 8th...

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