Back to the 3 "Ds" and Mounting the Wing Skins

You remember the 3 "Ds" of airplane building, don't you? Drilling, deburring, and dimpling. Today I finished deburring all of the holes in the wing walk doubler and inboard top wing skin that I match drilled yesterday. I also had to remember how to use the soldering gun to remove strips of the blue vinyl from the rivet hole lines while keeping the remainder of it on the rest of the skins as long as possible to prevent scratches.

With that all done, it was time to fit the top skins to the left wing. The inboard skin is a little tricky because you have to mount it over the top of the wing walk doubler. Actually this turned out to be fairly simple. I clecoed the top rivet holes to the main wing spar flange first, and then I slid the doubler underneath between the skin and the ribs. Everything lined up nicely and so it was easy to continue securing the sandwiched doubler to the wing frame. Vans says to cleco every fourth hole in the skin after that. Here is the inboard top skin W702 all clecoed in place with the doubler hidden underneath. The area on the right where the blue vinyl has been removed is the area where the doubler resides underneath the skin. One day I will be stepping on this area and then into the cockpit with the intent of taking my first flight.Yay! It is finally starting to look more like a wing.

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Next came the W703 outboard top skin. It covers the outer 2/3 of the wing and is so it is longer than the inboard skin. Now I have to rant again about Vans piss poor instructions. They mention installing the the W702 and W703 top skins,and then make no further mention about installing the bottom skins after that. You don't figure that out until you read down further where they talk about leaving the top skins clecoed while removing only the bottom skins in preparation for installing the leading edge. Anyway, here is outboard skin clecoed in place:

An interesting note that some may not be aware of  is that the direction that the writing appears on the wing skins is the same direction of the grain of the metal. Note how the grain runs differently from the inboard to the outboard. IN fact, you can't see it, but the wing walk doubler across the first four inboard ribs is also cross grain from the inboard wing skin. This adds strength to the overall wing and does have an affect on the way that the skin will bend and twist while in flight.

And now for the next problem.... I ran out of #40 clecoes.

Since I am building both wings at the same time, I need massive amounts of clecoes. Another lesson you learn is that the initial tool kit that you purchase will generally contain enough clecoes to complete the empennage, but you will need more for the wings and the fuselage. I will need to make some calls and send some emails tomorrow to see if I can borrow some more, but I figured I need at least 500 more clecoes, and probably even more than that. I have several builders in the area that I can ping, and then my entire EAA chapter membership, and then our Chapter Tool  Officer, so I should be able to scrounge enough without having to buy brand new ones.

Here is a view of the bottom of the wing with both top skins on:

Next is the W702 inboard top skin for the right wing on the bench with its wing walk doubler positioned underneath. Unfortunately, I need more clecoes before I can match drill these holes. I also made the mistake of keeping my bottom wing skins on my shelf, and now there is less room to maneuver with a ladder to get them down, but I will manage.

And then finally I just could not resist this. I have had my leading edge clecoed together in its jig for a very long time, Now that the wing assembly is in progress, I wanted to see what it looked like on the wing, so I temporarily mounted it on the spar just for kicks. Still alot of prep work to do before the LE goes on permanently, but hopefully this will be done in a few weeks. The "chunk" of the wing that is missing from this pic is the spot where the LE fuel tanks will go. They will hold 20 gallons of fuel per tank. Yup, looks like s great big Hershey bar, but it is a well proven and tested design that will suit my needs just fine.

Think Saturday Night Live starring Christopher Walken years ago when you read this next line:

"I gotta have more clecoes!"