Time: 5 Hours
I was able to finish up the rest of the deburring on the nose tabs. Next up was to hit the rest of the edges on the scotch-brite wheel and remove all the imperfections from Van’s stamping process. I also grabbed the 1″ scotch-brite wheel and hit the lightening holes. With those tasks done I screwed down my flange tool to straighten the flanges to a 90° angle to the webbing.
With all the flanges now at 90° I was able to use my fluting pliers to take any curve out of the ribs. Before I called it a day I wanted to get at least one of the tanks assembled so I grabbed the leading edge cradle and grabbed the left tank skin. I have read several different builders sites and it seems that it’s 50/50 on how easy the ribs go in. Well for mine I was with the 50% that had trouble! I couldn’t get them slide in far enough to get the holes lined up while in the cradle. So I removed the skin from the cradle and really had to apply pressure to get the holes close. I’m worried about this as when it comes time to assemble these with the nasty Pro-Seal tank sealant on them. Here is a view with the left tank on the spar, has a pretty tight fit between the tank and outboard leading edge for the initial fit.
We will see how the right ribs go in their skin and see how worried I need to be!
