Time: 6 Hours
The FedEx guy showed up at lunch time just as I got home from running my errands this morning. Since the SB parts are here so I jumped in the Hangar to finish up the work.
First task was to cut the angle off the end of the forward spar flanges. After thinking about it overnight I decided to remove 8 more rivets along the forward spar and skin joint. I also removed 13 rivets along the rear spar on the top and bottom. What this did was allow me to lift the skin away from the cut area and get a file and sandpaper along the cut. It wasn’t perfect but it worked.
I then used a plastic pry bar to lift the spar from the skin to make the cut with my Dremal.
The next task was to cut off the forward flange of the main inboard ribs.
The plans call for 4 holes to be drilled in the rib web, I measured per the plans and drilled them on the drill press.
I grabbed the new spar doublers and separated them on the band saw. All the edges were then deburred and the machining marks were removed and smoothed over.
There is a top and bottom of the doublers where the top is depicted by 1 offset rivet hole. I used all the other holes to make a straight line on the top and bottom of the fingers that extend off the doubler.
I also drew a line down the of the holes on the spar that will correspond to the ones on the fingers of the doubler. When I clamped the doublers to the spar by lining up the bends in the spar I also lined up the two lines I drew.
With the doublers clamped in their place I started drilling and cleckoing the 8 holes that the plans call out. I then checko’ed the two support angles that were on the spar originally and match drilled every hole. As I drilled 1 I would clecko and move to the next. There were several holes that get drilled from the doubler side and several that get drilled from the angle side.
I deburred every hole and scuffed the new doublers as well as the existing angles for priming.
I also taped off the horizontal stab so that I could touch up the primer from where I scratched it during this process.
Tomorrow I will get to rivet the doublers in place, I need to borrow a double offset rivet set from Glen as it’s pretty tight inside the skin for riveting the doubler, another good day in the Hangar.