Wings

Today, I clecoed the two inboard stiffeners that were trimmed and polished yesterday onto the left spar for match-drilling. Repeat for the right spar. Since the spar is Z-shaped, having a scrap 2 x 4 underneath to drill into made it easy.

Now the spar itself needs some deburring to prepare it for priming. Every hole drilled through it was deburred on both sides. Then the sharp edges of each flange needed attention. This handy deburring tool is great for deburring long sharp edges of flanges. You just apply some pressure and pull it along the edge. You can see all the metal shavings it produces. The little V-shaped cutter head works very efficiently, although sometimes it chatters a bit. Then, a sanding block with some emery cloth was run across it until smooth. Finally, a scotchbrite pad and some hand-scrubbing produced a nice smooth edge. This process works well for big parts like this that would be difficult to run across the scotchbrite wheel.

Here's a close-up of the cutter head, and the shavings it produces. Nice tool.

Now, back to that center stiffener plate. I got out my big unibit and put it in the drill press. I found out that the shaft on this unibit is too big to fit into my little hand drill. But that's okay. I would want to use the drill press for this operation anyway. I used some scrap 2 x 6 to drill into. I was able to get fairly close to the line with several plunges of the bit.

My Dremel tool did the rest of the rough trimming. It's now ready to cleco back on the spar, to match-finish this hole with the hole in the spar.

Here's a shot of both the left and right center-stiffeners, with the holes rough-cut to the blue sharpie lines that I marked earlier.

Once again, time runs out and I wish I could keep going. More on this tomorrow.

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