If I don’t debur another wing rib for 10 years it will be too soon. Man what a tedious and repetitive job. I’m very grateful that the father-in-law was around to lend a hand or else I’d be working on these ribs for the next month.
We picked up where we left off with me filing all the nooks and cranes and Bill sanding the lightening holes. When Bill finished sanding he leapfrogged me and started straightening and fluting the flanges.
Finally after 2 solid days, we had a pile of deburred, straightened and fluted wing ribs. We cracked a celebratory beer and massaged our aching fingers and just stood back to admire … well to be honest … a pile of wing ribs that don’t really look much different than when we started.
I then trimmed the rear spar forks and doubler plates using my band saw. After I trimmed a piece, Bill cleaned them up with a hand file. Here is a shot of the doubler plates after being filed.
After I handed the last piece to Bill to file, I went back to the rear spar and clamped the reinforcement plates in position. I match drilled all the holes and marked the funny taped hole for the aerolon control rod.
I then removed the aerolon reinforcement plate and placed it in a vice with a block of wood behind it. I was going to use my Unibit to drill most of the hole out but I had to mark the centres for each drill location. I fond using a washer and marking the inner diameter made it easier and accurate to mark the centres for each drill circle required.
I then drilled most of the hole out using my Unibit, moving the block of wood so I had an undrilled section of wood behind the hole to keep the Unibit steady for each drill. I handed the plate to Bill to file the hole to the correct size and I went to debarring the forks and doubler plates. I used my Scotchbrite wheel to debur the doubler plates and the outside edges of each fork. For the inside edges I used a file and finished off with 400 sand paper. Here they are all smooth.
By the time I had these done, Bill had finished filing the aerolon control rod holes to size. Here is a shot of the final result.
I finished off a very big couple of days by debarring all the holes in the spar that I had drilled and all the holes in the reinforcement plates.
Once again, I have included the man-hours supplied by Bill as well as myself. Build time over the past couple of days 23 hours.
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