Wings

Now that I've finished all the hard work I've experienced with these things, the ailerons are ready to be primed and riveted together. This requires a special riveting jig to make it much easier.

Here are the counterweight pipes and nose ribs, all primed and riveted together. This is why these nose ribs weren't riveted to the spars earlier. You start by riveting them to the pipe.

Here are the nose skins, all primed and ready to rivet to the nose ribs and counterweight pipes. If my priming job looks funny above, it's because I used the last of my can of green primer, and then switched to the gray. It's the same primer, just different colors. I won't be using any more green. This is inside where it will never be seen, so the appearance doesn't matter. The important thing is, it's primed.

Once the counterweight pipes are pop-riveted in place to the nose ribs, they are clecoed to the nose skin.

This shot shows how the jig I built for riveting the ailerons will work. It's basically a set of short-blocks that hold the aileron upright. This bucking bar turned out to have the perfect angle for this job. The duct tape and black tape will prevent scratches as I slide this bar along the spar and rivet this thing together.

And here it is, part way into the riveting. It was easy to reach under the skin to hold the bucking bar in place and not worry about the proper angle, or having it move around. This made this job some of the easiest riveting done to date, with excellent results. In the foreground, you can see the temporary wood screws holding the spar to the short-blocks. I managed to get part of the left aileron finished tonight. By the way, see that gnarly-looking scar on my left thumb? Wanna know how that happened? Let's just say that scotchbrite wheels are meant for metal, NOT SKIN! They will take your skin off in a hurry, and healing takes a long time for some reason.

Here's another shot showing how well this jig works for the riveting job on the ailerons. Simple short blocks temporarily screwed to the workbench hold the aileron, which is temporarily screwed to the ends of the blocks. I should be able to finish these up tomorrow.

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