I spent some time yesterday working on the first wing rib jig. The workbench needed a new top surface, so I picked up a sheet of 3/4″ MDF at Lowe’s. They were nice enough to cut it for me. I ended up with one piece 3′ x 8′ for the bench, and two 1′ x 4′ chunks for rib jigs. Nice how that worked out.
I marked a center line on the MDF and laid out the rib setup from Sheet #1 of the plans over it, then trimmed the paper to fit the jig. I hate cutting up plans, but there’s an extra copy of that page for this reason. I made all of the little chunks of plywood for the locating blocks, and cut a few small pieces of pine stock as needed. Then I cut out the places where I would need holes to accommodate clothespins, marked those on the MDF and cut them out with a scroll saw. I used some spray adhesive to stick the plans down to the MDF. So far so good.
Next I had to find some clear poly to cover the plans sheet. I finally remembered the nearly 4′ long bag in which the plans were shipped; it fit just fine. With that in place I started nailing the locating blocks in place over the plan sheet. I got most of them done before knocking off for the night. I still need to make one more plywood block for the main spar locator, and make the blocks for the top and bottom capstrips. I haven’t decided for sure how to do those. I had thought about using a couple pieces of pine bent to fit, but that seems like a great way to mess up the jig trying to get them perfectly in place, and the jig needs to be as close to perfect as I can make it. I’ll probably go with closely spaced pine blocks, nailed in place.
