Wings

Lots of progress today! First, I got the tungsten bucking bar I ordered from Midwest Tungsten... regular ground shipping from IL, it was door-to-door in less than 24 hours... nice! And holy crap it's tiny and really heavy!! I think I finally understand why tungsten is so desirable for use in a bucking bar... duh. Wish I had bought one sooner, they are just so darn expensive compared to steel I just never justified the cost. Advice to future builders: buy one sooner than later, the more rivets you buck with it, the more money you'll get out of it. Also, it's way easier to make a clean-looking, flush rivet since it will be less prone to wander while you're riveting. Just don't drop it on your toe.

This lil' guy bucks rivets better than the steel bars I have that are twice this size! I might buy one or two more now that I'm sold... hey it's only money right? Ha.

Also my Duckworks "lampless" landing light install kits arrived! I'm planning on putting a light in each wing, but I want to use my own design for lights so this kit seemed like the perfect thing. I'm excited to install them!

Anyway, on to the wings. Did basically the same thing to the right wing today that we did to the left wing yesterday, more as a team effort this time. Originally I think the plan was for Sarah to do the right wing with me doing the left wing, but so many parts just go so much easier with two people and four hands instead of us both struggling separately on our own things. We'll see how this new paradigm works :-)

The assembled wing spars and ribs, both sides complete!

View from the wingtip side, you can see rib #15 is only clecoed into place so far (we'll need to remove it for later access before finally riveting it into place)

I also found some time to continue on the L wing rear spar. It turned out yesterdays boo-boo on the W-1007D piece was actually double-wrong... not only did I drill the wrong part, it was also upside down and backwards! So it's completely useless, can't turn it into the shorter E part. No big deal, just frustrating to see such a careless mistake. At least it was a $3 piece. Anyway, got all 5 pieces drilled and deburred for the L wing:

The W-1007 E, D-O, D-I, C, and B pieces after drilling

The rear spar clecoed into place with all hinges and doublers

The inner aileron hinge bracket clecoed to the rear spar

View of the rear spar

Tomorrow we probably won't be building much but hopefully this weekend we'll be able to get started on the R rear spar (as much as we can while we're still missing one of the doublers) and maybe start on the top skins... exciting!