Wingribs

I prepared all the left wing ribs for priming today (lots of sanding, scotchbriting and alu-etching) and managed to prime 10 of them before our dinner guests arrived.

After a long day in New York (first visit to this magnificent city) with Michela and her mam, I didn't have much energy left for a long night in the shop, but got at least an hour after dinner, which I used to drill the holes for the pitot and AOA tubes from Safeair1. I decided to enlarge both tool holes at the bottom of the ribs to 1/2" which is sufficient to hold snap bushings to route the tubes through. All the electrical stuff will go through the bigger 3/4" hole I drilled yesterday.

Finally got something done again today. With my italian mother-in-law over at our place and my work-related travel, I haven't had much time to work on the plane this week. But tonight I drilled the big hole (3/4" which is the max allowed according to Van) in all the left wing ribs for the electrical wires using the large unibit in my drill press.

I spent most of the morning at the EAA hangar at N57 for the first pancake breakfast of the year. The skies were pretty grey and cloudy, but there was a good turnout anyway. In the afternoon I finally got my signoff on the Piper Archer II from Rob Porter so now I can rent that plane myself so once in a while and try to stay current. It has an IFR panel so I can use it to stay IFR current as well. Anyway...

The afternoon was spent in the workshop to finish deburring, straightening edges and fluting all the ribs (finally done!). Here is a pic of me using the die grinder with a small scotchbrite wheel to smoothen the holes in the ribs.

I've cleco'd the left main wing ribs on the main and rear spars and guess what, this thing is finally starting to look like a wing :-)

Here's the picture that everyone has to show (quality work Van!).

Hopefully I can hang this structure on the wing stand tomorrow to put some skins on.

Feels like this is never coming to an end. More edge deburring on the other half of the stack of ribs. Hopefully I'll be done by the end of the weekend.

Deburred, straightened flanges and fluted approximately half of all the ribs. Other half, here I come! Man, this is pretty boring work. Hope it will soon be over :-)

Finished edge hole deburring on all of the left wing ribs. Started to straighten and flute the flanges. Sorry, no pictures; this is not exiting enough to capture in a photo!

I've started sorting the left and right wing ribs and will start working on the left first as I have decided to built one wing at a time. My allergies were pretty bad today and I haven't been able to do much work. Was able to debur edges and flute flanges on two ribs and then gave up. Hopefully tomorrow will be a bit better...

My wing rib adventure is starting soon. Here is a picture of all the ribs I will have to debur and prime...