Wings

Some real progress today! Primed, assembled and riveted the rear main spar for the L wing per the plans (15-4 step 4). This involved leaving a line of rivets out along the lower-middle of the spar for later attachment of the gap fairings. Other than that, this completes the skeleton structure of the left wing! In the meantime, Sarah got to work starting Section 15 on the right wing, match-drilling and assembling the 5 pieces of the rear spar. Well, 4 pieces... we're proceeding without the W-1007D/I piece for now until it arrives.

The W-1007B/C spar doubler (most inboard)

The W-1007D/I spar doubler

The W-1007D/O spar doubler with W-1013-L aileron attach bracket

The W-1007E spar doubler

Got some new toys in the mail today too! Got my shipment from Cleaveland tools which included a handheld back-rivet bucking bar and long back-rivet set to use on the wing top skins, Also got a new drill... being a DeWalt guy myself, I've come to realize 90% of the drilling we do does not require a bulky, heavy, powerful drill... small and lightweight is good especially when you have a million tiny holes to drill. So we got a Bosch PS31-2A. Seems to fit the bill perfectly!

The back-rivet bucking bar from Cleaveland Tool. Beefy! Can't wait to give it a try.

The diminutive and lightweight Bosch drill. It works perfectly for the majority of our drilling needs!

The last thing we got in the mail today was a surprise indeed... the W-1007D doubler I had reordered from Van's! I was sure that it would take longer than this to arrive, but this is great news. We'll be able to finish up the rear spar on the right wing now!

After finishing the L rear spar, I got to work on Section 16 for the top skins. This was exciting to me because it's the first skin-related step since working on the tailcone. Also, clecoing skins into place is usually pretty fun and goes quickly, with a dramatic change in appearance:

The two W-1027A/B wing walk doublers fit unto place underneath the top skin

The W-1002 inboard top skin, clecoed in place over the doublers (also Sarah final-drilling the rear spar on the R wing)

The (L) top skins clecoed into place

Once Sarah finished match-drilling, we decided instead of disassembling everything now in order to go back and make the W-1007D/I doubler to just leave everything clecoed into place and start on the top skins too. So, after a bit of clecoing, we had the top skins in place for the right wing too!

The (R) top skins clecoed into place

Inboard view of the wings

Outboard view of the wings

Good stopping point for today! Tomorrow we'll start the laborious and non-photogenic task of final-drilling the 500 or so holes in the skins... maybe some deburring and dimpling too, we'll see!