Wing work thru 2/20

Top and bottom leading edge plywood has been scalloped. That wasn’t as big a chore as I thought it would be. We used a thin stainless scale to establish a curve between each pair of ribs, marked along it with a pencil, and cut the wood with a utility knife. Some cleanup with sandpaper and Bob’s your uncle.

I’ve made a few iterations of the bearing block. Today I’ll print a couple more test pieces and I think I’ll be done. They fit great, the aileron is very well located, all in all I think it’s a lot more precise than a piece of plywood and a chunk of PVC pipe.

I’ve been preparing some of the wing attachment fittings. I have one or two of each part drilled with 1/8 pilot holes; I’ll use those to match drill the rest, then enlarge the holes for the AN4 bolts. The biggest question was hot wo round off the ends. For that I drilled a 1/8 hole exactly 1/2 inch from the disk on my disc/belt sander. Now I can use the tail end of a drill bit as a pivot pin and put a nice radius on the end of the fitting. I’m glad I kept my gray Scotch-Brite wheel on the bench polisher; it makes quick work of cleaning up the ends of the AL bars.

First Aluminum

Today I picked up some flat bar stock from Millard Metals. The Celebrity wings use fittings of various sizes to attach flying wires, landing wires, N struts, and of course to attach the wings to the fuselage. These are made from 1/8″ and 3/16″ 6061-T6 and 3/16″ 2024-T4. I ordered some 6061 tubing from Aircraft Spruce to use as bushing stock. It will take me a while to get all of the brackets cut and drilled, but I did cut at least one of each piece and marked them for the bolt holes. I’ll drill them with small pilot holes, and once they’re all ready I can start drilling the spars for the bolts to attach them. Once those holes are drilled we can start assembling the first wing. I can install the bushings after the wing is assembled, but the holes need to be drilled first.