Left Wing V

9/18/2006

All the spar fillers have now been glued onto the top of the wing. I cut them as flush as possible to the top of the adjacent ribs, then used a long sanding block to finish. The 1/4 inch ply fillet that goes on the spar at the I-strut location was a touch too proud for sanding, so I flushed that with a router.

Next I fitted the tip bow. To cut the tips off the ends of the spars, in order for them to marry up to the tip bow, I made a primitive compass from a length of 3/4 x 3/4 at 21R radius with a nail one end located in the center of the rib, and a pencil attached to the other end, rotated it around, then marked on the spars accordingly.

It's a good idea to clamp in a square piece of lumber at the front of the rib [see pic at right] and at the tail, this stops the rib from flexing while fitting the bow - a slight out of square nose rib isn't the end of the world, but the rear has to be square because of the aileron bay.

I then drilled the I-strut holes using a drill, seen in the Right Wing section on here.

Finally, I built up the spar tips to the bow, ready for shaping when cured.