Trailing Edge, Wing Tip Bow, and Leading Edge Test Fit

Bending the bits of the trailing edge where they fit over the rear end of each rib.

After doing this, I thought of the idea of making a wedge out of oak to smooth things out a bit. I made the wedge the same shape and size as the rear two inches, or so, of the rib. Then, after this initial bending with the needle nose pliers, we stuck it into that spot, and banged on it with a metal working hammer (any hammer would probably work). It got the shape nice and smooth. It worked well. I'll do the same thing for the other three wings.

Test fit of the leading edge. We did LOTS of test fits before final install.

Turns out I installed the butt rib a little bit out of alignment with the rest of the ribs. Long story short, I'm going to mix up a little flox (epoxy with some cotton mixed in to thicken it up) and put it in the gap, just for some rigidity behind the thin sheet aluminum. The gap is on the right hand side of this photo near the top and is several inches long. I thought that would be better than forcing the aluminum into conformity and causing other deformities in the material. Something to look out for on subsequent wings.

It's really tough to get the whole leading edge sheet down tight to the ribs and other components. I'll talk about that more later one (future blog posts).

This is one of the cutouts for the wing brackets to poke through. I started by drilling out the two ends. Then I tried using tin snips to cut. That did not work at all! I ended up thinking of using my Dremel with a cutoff wheel.

I used this stone wheel to round off some of the corners in the cutouts for the brackets.

The cutoff wheel on the right was one of the ones that came with the Dremel. It's super thin. If it binded at all, it just exploded! I destroyed two of them pretty quickly. I bought a 5-pack of the ones on the left at Home Depot. They're way thicker and stronger. They work great and should last a long time. They working great for cutting the aluminum sheet.

A view of the angle aluminum stringers.

Drilling holes for screws which will hold the wing tip bows to the leading edge spruce.

Pre-screwing the screws into the wing tip bow.

After the initial forming of the outboard end of the trailing edge where it will fit with the wing tip bow, there was left a sharp end at the inner rear edge. That seemed like a perfect spot for a tear to happen, so it occurred to me to use one of my round needle files to take away the sharp corner—kind of a stress riser, I guess.

Here's how it turned out. Very nice!