Wings

Today I continued work on the ailerons by finishing up the riveting on the left aileron stiffeners. Then I spent some time deburring the edges of the skins. These are now ready to be closed together using a bending brake. I dug out my old homemade bending brake that has been sitting around since I last used it on the empennage for the elevators and discovered a problem.

Here are both aileron skins, with all stiffeners riveted in place, ready to be closed or bent together. Below is a closeup shot of some of the riveting on one of the stiffeners. I'm very happy with how these came out.

Here's my old empennage homemade bending brake. Two problems were immediately apparent. For one, as you can see, it's too short! I don't dare to try and bend these skins with some left hanging out on the end, or I'm afraid it will warp or kink the skins. Can't risk that. But even if it were long enough, the other problem is that after sitting around all these months, the boards have warped. You can see it if you look close at the picture above, how the right end lifts up off the workbench. So even if it were long enough, I can't use this contraption. The good news is, it's easy enough to build another one. I just thought I could get this step done quickly and move on. I don't have any material around here to make another one, and all the stores are closed at this hour, so this will have to wait. Dang it! I hate these annoying little delays.

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