Lions and Tie Downs and Spacers - OOH MY!

OK, as promised, pics from the last two days of activty.

First is shot with the lightening holes drilled out of the spacers, nut place placed on top temporarily, and spacers placed in position to show where they are located on the Wing spar, The sapcers get nuzzled up against the inner edges of the top and bottom Spar bars, and the tie down bracket goes over the top of this. 8 holes per tie down to drill, plus the additional rivet holes for each of the nut plates.

Next pic is a bit blurry, bt I took this to show how precise you need to be when driling these buggers on the edges of the spacers. The spacer will cover the two holes just to the right of it in this sideways pic, and you can see how close to the edges of the spacer each of these holes will be. This means that they need to be clamped securely in place and kept in place during the drilling process.

Next is my process for drilling out the large lightening holes in each of the spacers. I first cut each spacer to rough size - 1.25 x 2 inches per the plans. Used my band saw and a scrap piece of wood to catch the metal shavings before they can travel through the saw wheels and guides - worked great. That was the easy part. Next came the hole saw rig. Here is the drill press with the two angles clamped into position with the 1 inch hole saw in the chuck. I took one of the spacers and slid it in between each of the angles, then adjusted my drill press table and vise to center up the drill arbor on the punched hole in the spacer that I had already measured per the plans. I needed about 8 hands to set this up easily. I guess after doing all this I read some posts tonight where people have been using the unibit for this, but I ahve also heard of folks having problems with that approach, which is why I opted for the hole saw approach. I wanted to be sure I was safe from any flying metal should the worst happen, so C clamps instead of bar clamps were the order of the day for this little feat.

And another blurry pic that shows a spacer inserted in between the angles. This was to keep the spacer from being able to shoot out should the hole saw end up grabbing the metal and torqueing it over hard for some reason. Worked pretty well but was a pain in the ass to get clamped up correctly. The spacer in this pic is already drilled and is not in the actual position for drilling, but you get the idea. Notice all the shavings too. Made a huge mess in the shop.

Safety glasses or goggles are a must for this:

Once the spacers were drilled, you end up with some interesting by-products:

Now on to the bolt holes for the tie down brackets. The plan tell you to measure and mark the hole for the top outboard hole, adn drill that one first. I also did these fitst holes on the drill press, and yes, clamping these brackets was a bit of challenge due to their odd shape.

And the hole after drilling:

Then you fit it on the spar by placing one of the bolts through the hole and align the tie down bracket so it is square with the spar. The edge of the bracket actually overhanges the ends of the spar bars by about 1/8 of an inch. This is clearly shown in the plans, but why it ends up this way is a mystery to me. The ends of the tie down brackets will also be just short of the edges of both spar bars. This is also shown on the plans:

Forgot to mention that I deburred all the spacers after drilling the lightening holes. This last pic shows how the spacers will be underneath the tie down bracket (shown off to the side in this pic for orientation).

Vans tells you to clamp everything in place adn back drill the 7 remaining bolt holes in each bracket/spacer. So this evening I spent considerable time trying to figure out how best to do this. I have some large metal clamps that have just been waiting for the right opportunity to be used, and this seemed like the right time. Anyway, long story short, and I'm too tired to go get a pic of this madness, I finally had an epiphony after struggling with the clamping process to make this all work. Instead of trying to clamp the sapcers AND the bracket together adn drilling through everything, I finally realized that I can just position the spacers and clamp them down and drill the holes through them first -  or maybe not. Guess I am tired enough that I just need to stop until I can figure this out and move on. Can't find details on other build sites or VAF that elaborate on how this was done. SO looks like clamping and drilling will take place tomorrow, assuming I figure out the easy way to do this.