Left Wing Ribs Primed

Despite the beautiful day today, I kept on pushing through with my rib prepping and priming and finished the complete set of ribs for the left wing and a few more that are needed for the right one. I think I counted 16 ribs on the drying stack.


Riveting of the main ribs to the left spar can begin now! A brief summary of the hours spent on section 15 showed around 23 hours.

Tomorrow morning I will drive out to the field though and see if I can get a nice relaxing sightseeing flight done. Destination is the Baboquivari Peak and then maybe a stop in Sells on the way back.

Oh, I almost forgot... Van's sent me a letter announcing the arrival of the Fuse kit, minus an F-1231A-AR, which seems to translate into a "Roll Bar Frame". They said it was on backorder... huh? BACKORDER? I thought they manufacture all that metal stuff themselves??? How could it be on backorder then? Hm, we'll see how that plays out, for now I'm busy with the wings anyway and it sure seems to take a while to finish them. In the meanwhile I will have to find some smart storage for this Fuse kit crate again as I don't have the slightest clue right now where I could put it ...

Finally, a Setback

I finished what I believe to be the last match drilling of section 15 before the major riveting session is going to start. This was for four main ribs that needed to be match drilled with the hinge assembly (flaperon) and some additional doubler bracket. Nothing exciting here, just cleco as you go after each hole and spread the holes you drill in a random pattern to ensure that there's no tension introduced to the structure.
After I had made sure that there wasn't more drilling required on the following two pages, I started collecting the ribs that should be primed first to finish some left out steps, like riveting nutplates to them and such. That's when I realized something weird. I had a stack of -L main ribs put away as they were not to be trimmed and supposed to be left alone. 7 of them to be exact. Well, when I looked at them it appeared that one rib wasn't quite right on that stack....
A closer look revealed that it was a -R instead of a -L and quickly counting them confirmed that I must have messed this up. Only 6 -L were on the stack untouched and one untouched -R. Ouch! I thought I had made absolutely sure that this wouldn't happen but somehow - and I can't even image when and how - I must have messed this up. All the -R main ribs are supposed to get trimmed the forward flange off. That was easy to fix but that still left me with one untouched -L main rib short and I can't glue the trimmed off flange back on!
Aw, well, that was expected to happen sooner or later and I am glad it happened later than I thought. I went back inside and checked the Van's website for the shocking price of a W-1210-L and was pleasantly surprised to find it to be less than $17. The pleasant part of the surprise will soon be forgotten when I see the shipping charges applied to this relatively odd shaped shipment, I am sure. I ordered two ribs as I had nicked one a little during speed deburring with the 6" Scotchbrite wheel and this was a good chance to fix that problem as well.
To get over this little setback, I decided to ignore it and move on with the show. Prepping was the labor of the day and that's what I did. I chose the ribs that need further processing like nutplate attachments to go first into the prepping queue. Then follow the -R main ribs (which are supposed to get riveted on the LEFT spar, God knows why) and they are the ones used next in the assembly.



All in all I got 12 ribs prepped today. There are only 11 in this picture as the 12th was still hanging outside to dry.
The plan is to paint them early tomorrow and let them dry during the day while I go flying and then work on the nose ribs that needed some more processing done in the evening. And hopefully I can get all the necessary main ribs prepped and primed on Sunday so I can start riveting them onto the left spar during the week. Doing a little riveting after work in the evening is easy to do compared to prep work that is kind of messy and only worth the setup and cleaning time if you actually have enough time and daylight to go through a little stack of parts at least.

Deburring of Ribs Done

A short two hours in the shop finished the deburring task tonight. It would have been much faster if I hadn't found the stack of unmodified left main ribs that I had put away to not accidentally trim them. That action had also put them out of my sight for the deburring though, so I had to finish them as well.
So, now I can finally head on to the prepping job and scrub them all. Jeez!
Well, I am thinking about flying up to the Grand Canyon taking Friday off to have a full day there before returning on Sunday. That might give me a nice break and keep me away from the prepping for this weekend. If you're close to Valle, AZ where I intend to stay over night, drop me a line and we could have a beer up there...

Finished Edge Deburring on RIbs

Wow, another couple of hours spent on deburring tonight and I finished doing this at least to the edges of the main ribs. As they are pretty straight I found another good way of doing this with my 6" Scotchbrite wheel. It's not as surgical as the little 1" wheel in the die grinder but a lot faster and less exhausting to use. The inside of the right main ribs needed some treatment that couldn't be done with the big wheel though, so it was back to the die grinder again.



At least the majority of the job was done with the big wheel in almost no time, so it wasn't that bad at all. So now all that is left to do before I can enjoy scrubbing all these ribs with Cortec-440 is to deburr the flange holes of these ribs but that shouldn't take more than an hour and I probably do that tomorrow evening.

BTW, I used up quite some 1" Scotchbrite wheels on just the ribs as the edges were so sharp they sometimes just cut a slice of the wheel right off. A real "cheap" source for these 1" wheels is Reid Supply. They have the fine 1" wheel for $2.40 at this time while others charge $6.50. The item number for this wheel is 3M-13713. I also tried to work with the slightly harder medium compound wheel but I couldn't effectively use it in the die grinder as it tends to jump.

Straightened the Cuts

I had second sessions later this afternoon and spent half an hour to straighten those rough cuts that the nibbler left on the forward edge of the main ribs.

Here's a before-after shot of how the cut looked before and after I trimmed it with the Cut & Polish and the Scotchbrite Wheel.



Another thing I noticed when dealing with the main ribs is the lack of distinction between the -L and the -R version of the ribs. The only way to quickly tell which one is which once the stickers are gone are the location of two holes in the web.

One is in the forward part of the rib:



And one is in the aft area:


So, in case you removed the stickers and thought the ribs were all the same and found out later that you have no clue which is which, look closely at these photos. The left rib in the picture is the -L and the right one is the -R version.

Still Trimming Along ...

Puh, this is really taking a while. I finished deburring the holes of all the nose ribs, I got even that far to almost install some nutplates before I realized that I will have to wait with the riveting until I have primed the ribs.
So I went on and started trimming more flanges off the main ribs. After doing this on 19 ribs I didn't go that far to also straighten and deburr the cut.
Actually, If you haven't started working on these ribs yet, you'll be surprised on how many you will have to remove material. My workshop is somewhat limited in available tools, and I came up with an OK solution to accomplish these trimmings in a reasonable amount of time. I used the HF pneumatic nibbler to remove most of the material. The edges of the cuts are pretty rough and my 3M Cut & Polish wheel trimmed the rest of these edges and made them smooth enough to deburr them with the Scotchbrite wheel thereafter. It's a 3-step process but fairly fast and easy on the polish wheels.
If you have a bandsaw you could use that very well on the aft flanges of the nose ribs and the nose flanges on the main ribs, probably reducing the process time quite a bit.

The next steps are to straighten the cuts on the main ribs and deburr all 26 of them. I might have to spend all week on this ...
But there's another package from Van's on its way. So maybe I can interrupt the routine by doing some inventory again!

Yay!

If you didn't notice it.... The enthusiasm was fake :-)

Nose Rib Edges Deburred

It took me a while to come up with a positive sounding headline, so please give it a moment and silently appreciate it.
The nose ribs seem to have been deburred - on their edges. That means I have to go through the stacks again and do the holes but then I should be finally done with them.

Here's a pic of the stacks on one of my workbenches:



The one on the far left is the stack with the nose ribs for the left wing, the one to the far right is the one with the nose ribs for the right wing and then we have the two stacks in the middle. These are the main ribs for both wings and I haven't done anything with them yet.

It took me about 6-7 hours to do the deburring, trimming and fluting of the nose ribs for both wings so far.