Starting Wing Assembly

Starting wing assembly. First thing you do is slide all the ribs onto the spars. You've got to make sure they go on smoothly and can be angled at 6° for the sweep of the upper wing.

Trim the spar opening uprights on the ribs wherever necessary so that the ribs can be angled at 6° without binding. This is why you use shims while assembling the ribs on the jig, but some fine tuning may be required during wing assembly.

I love seeing it come together!

ONLY AFTER the ribs are all adjusted properly so they don't bind when angled at 6° should you epoxy the scab plates to the spars. After these are in place, the ribs can't come off! Every place a bracket touches the spars, you have to have a scab plate.

Scab plates clamped in place while the epoxy cures.

The biggest scab plate: outer end of the main spars on the upper wings.

Make sure to watch my aviation YouTube channel, Aviation Fanatic, for lots of videos about this build.

Finishing Up the Wing Brackets

Each upper wing has three compression tubes which, along with the drag wires (and spars, of course), give the wing its strength and rigidity. On the ends of each compression tube where it butts into the spars, there is a bracket with a little aluminum "button," or "compression tube locators." Each of these is held to its bracket with a small countersunk screw. The smooth part of each screw should fit nicely into the reamed hole, although by the time you're done countersinking the bracket, there's not much of a hole left. I was about to countersink all the way through, when I realized that something was wrong. The head of the screw wasn't fitting the countersink correctly, so I took some photos and measured some angles in Photoshop. Upon perusing the plans later, I discovered that they actually tell you to use a 100° countersink, while the one I had been using was 85°. There's a lot to keep straight, so I'm not surprised I missed it. Thankfully, I figured it out before I ruined any (or all!) of the brackets.

This is a countersink I already had on hand. I had used it in woodworking before. It's included angle is about 85°.

No wonder the screw didn't fit the hole properly! Their angles are totally different! So, I ordered the correct countersink (from MSC, I think) and the screws fit the countersunk holes perfectly, albeit with very little contact area left between the screw grip (the smooth part of the shank) and the hole. It was a great fit, though.

Getting ready to paint some brackets with zinc phosphate primer. That's the stuff that all interior metal gets coated with to help prevent corrosion.

Primed brackets. This primer doesn't seem very durable to me, so be careful with your primed brackets.

These are the compression tube locators, or "alignment buttons" as I like to call them. I made them on my new lathe, a Grizzly G0752. Check out my YouTube videos on the process.

This countersunk hole is to make some clearance for the grip (smooth part of the shank) in the screw so the button can get screwed down tight to the fitting. The countersunk hole I had some difficulty with is on the underside of that fitting.

This is an example of one of the brackets onto which the compression tube locator will be screwed. The bracket will be facing the other direction, though, of course. The screw head will be against the spar and the locator, or "button," will be facing outward toward the other spar to hold the compression tube in place between the spars.

Make sure to check out my aviation channel, Aviation Fanatic, to see some videos of me making the compression tube locators.

Wing Metals Package and Wing Brackets

With the ribs done, it's time to move on to wing assembly, but before that begins, I have to build the brackets. There are dozens to make, and to get started, I had to order the wing metals package. I also ordered the two hardware packages, one for each wing, or rather, set of wings on each side of the plane. Those just contain a bunch of nuts, bolts, and washers.

The Wing Metals Package

The Hardware

1/8" 2024 Aluminum for the wing brackets

Templates made from poster board. I'll trace these, then cut them out with the band saw. I tried the jig saw first, but discovered the band saw worked great. That is an indispensable tool for building and airplane. On occasion, if the original piece of metal wouldn't fit the throat of my band saw, I would use the jig saw to make one or two manageable pieces.

Some brackets, roughly cut out.

Almost all the brackets, cut close to final size, ready to be sanded to final size on the oscillating belt sander, another indispensable tool.

Laying out the holes. I ended up just laying the piece over the plans, then laying the ruler along the lines on the plans, and using a scribe to mark the intersections of the lines indicating the holes. Then, I would center punch those intersections. After that, it was easy to drill them. Make sure to drill 1/64 undersized, then eventually ream them to size. First, though, I just drilled 1/8" holes to use roll pins to gang several fittings together for fewer pieces to  sand.

Ganging several brackets together with roll pins for sanding. Why sand four times when you can sand once?

One of the bigger wing brackets: outer bracket, main spar, upper wing.

The scribe marks where a hole will go.

Tools of the trade for punching holes precisely (hammer not shown).

Getting ready to drill and ream.

As always, check my YouTube channel, Aviation Fanatic, to watch many videos of the construction of my Super Baby Great Lakes.

The New Nose Ribs

As stated previously, I rebuilt the ribs because my first attempt wasn't very good. Here are some pictures of the work on the nose ribs. They turned out MUCH better than the first set.

A nose rib in progress in a jig for cutting out the notches for the aluminum angle. The aluminum
angle runs span-wise across the wing to support the thin, aluminum leading edge sheeting.

Cutting a notch on the table saw using a dado head.

Using scrap wood cut to 6 degrees on the table saw to tilt the jig 6 degrees to get a
6-degree angle on the notch on the leading edge of the nose rib for a piece of spruce
that will run span-wise across the wings. The upper wings have a 6-degree sweep.

All the notches cut. I'll cut out the inside material next with a router
using the template as a guide.

The completed nose ribs. Much better than my first attempt!

There won't be any additional posts about building the ribs. The process was largely the same as initially, with a few exceptions. Check out my YouTube channel to see lots of details about the (re)building of the ribs.

Working on the Spars

Here, I'm getting ready to drill some holes in the two upper wing main spars.
The level is to help make sure the holes are perpendicular to the spar.

An adjustable stand is a great way to get a helping hand without bothering anyone else.

Fine tuning the setup. It's hard to see, but two scab plates are under the spars along with some
scrap wood to prevent tear out. I'm using a Forstner bit.

Here's a closeup of the Forstner bit.

These are all the scab plates for the wings. They're 1/16" pieces of plywood
that will be epoxied to the spars wherever brackets attach to provide a solid place
against which the brackets can be bolted.

A thin shaving of spruce from the spar generated from my Lie Nielsen block plane.

A wood plane and some spruce shavings.

Getting ready to trim the wingtips.

I created a few of these pieces of wood to help me get a straight edge set up the correct
distance form where I want a cut to make it easy to cut along a line with my worm drive saw (i.e., circular saw).

Part way there! The hole at the tip is for the wing tip bow, a tube of aluminum.

Making a cut.

Done with the upper wing main spars!