Lower Ailerons Done!

11/11/2005

The shaping of the leading edge was achieved with a block plane and orbital sander. If you keep a block plane sharp with an oil stone, you will be amazed at the smoothness of the cut... a lot of people tend to think "I don't need to sharpen this, I've only used it a few times'...if only they knew...

For leading edge profile accuracy, I copied the profile on to a scrap piece of ply and kept placing it at the leading edge along the length as I was sanding. I don't think profile replication is an exact science in this case, but reasonably close [and of course consistent the whole length] will suffice.

The hing notches were cut out with a jigsaw. I didn't cut exactly on the line, but approx 1/8 away from it - better to whittle away at a 1/8 stub than tryin to cut exact first time [difficult in this scenario with a jigsaw] only to find you cut off to much. The 1/16 skin was then trimmed out with a laminate trimmer. I then trimmed the 1/8 leading edge stubs flush with the table saw, cutting as close as I dare. Final flush finishing was with a block sander.

The trailing edge aluminium extrusions were notched at the rib locations with aviation snips. The notches allow the top of the trailing edge to sit flush on the ribs. They were glued on with T-88. The adhesion of the T-88 to alum' is not too thorough, but I will be tapping in some brass tacks for good measure. And of course, when the fabric is put on, there will be a lot of tension holding the aileron together anyways...

Final tasks were to clear-coat the ailerons, let cure, fill any staple holes with T-88, let cure, sand, and apply a final coat of clear-coat. I won't be adding the final radiused tip bow tail to the ailerons until I have wings and tip bows to correlate against.