September 21, 2004 - Left Wing

Pulled all the skins, leading edge and fuel tank off the wing structure. Now it's time to prep everything. Devinyl skins, deburr holes, smooth edges, dimple, countersink, ... This is gonna take awhile.

But, I have a helper! Margaret does a pretty good job deburring a hole. Unfortunately, she gets bored with it after the top flange of only two ribs, and disappears.

I'm dimpling the underside of the rib flange. To get a good deburr, I use the extension that came with the deburring tool.
Dimpling the ribs. Hey, it's slightly more fun than devinyling or deburring. And even more fun than smoothing edges.
She's back. But only to dimple less than five holes, then she disappeared. Still, she can rightfully say, "I built a part of that plane."

Devinyling. I use a soldering iron and a metal straightedge. It makes a nice cut and doesn't scratch the alcad, but you have to go sloooowwwww. I count one-alligator, two-alligator, three-alligator for every centimeter.

I suppose you could just peel all the plastic off. But it looks cool to leave it on. All RV builders do it. I guess it's just one of those things.

Previous
Home
Next