Started Preping Wing Ribs – 5 hrs

Saturday Aug 28, 2010

Next I started preparing the wing ribs by marking, deburring, squaring up flanges, and fluting. Wow, there are a lot of ribs! The first step was to smooth the edges of the flanges using the scotchbrite wheel on my bench grinder. I also decided to scotchbrite scrub the flanges before fluting because on the empennage kit I found it more difficult to do after fluting. That adds more time to the prep but I will make it up later when preparing to prime these parts.

About five hours later I had about 20 ribs completed, seven of which are main ribs (not leading edge or tank ribs). That is about 15 minutes per rib. Ouch!  The rest are in a partial state of completion. So I installed five of the ribs onto the left main spar with clecos to make sure everything looks straight and true.