More left wing activity

It's amazing what you can do when you don't have to work all week and the weather is conducive to a lot of airplane building. I finished riveting the main ribs to the left wing spar. I had to flip the spar over and re-clamp it to finish the last rivet in each rib by putting it on the bottom as I described in my previous post. I have a few dings to dress out but nothing serious.

Once the ribs were riveted to the main spar, it was time to swap the left and right spars. I needed to put the left wing spar on my work table, and put the right wing spar on the work bench. To do this I had to place the left wing temporarily on the stand so I could remove the right wing spar from the work table and place it on the work bench. With the right wing off of the work table I could then remove the left wing from the stand and put it on the table. Thanks to my wife for helping me shuffle everything around.

The whole reason for putting the left wing assembly on the table was to prepare to mount the left rear spar  to complete the bottom half of the wing frame. I did not want to leave it on the edge of the workbench because I was afraid that the extra weight of the rear spar might cause the entire assembly to come loose from the clamps and end up crashing to the ground. The table is a much better solution because it allows me to clamp the main spar to one end of the table and have enough table left over on the opposite end to cleco the rear spar without fear of anything falling off. IOW the table is wide enough for the entire  assembly of the wing,as shown below:

I could not get the entire wing in a single pic from the rear so I took two separate shots of the right and left sides:

The rear spar is clecoed in place on each of the ribs. I also pre-assembled the the inboard aileron hinge just to get a feel for how it will be attached to the rear spar. I could not attach the outboard hinge because of the way it is assembled with several hidden  flush rivets that are covered up by the support angles of the outer aileron hinge assembly. Pics will show this more clearly later on.

I had not seen my rear spars for quite a while since they had been in storage on a shelf for a very long time. I had to blow off some residual roofing debris, but they were otherwise in fine shape. Since I was by myself, I had to figure out the best way to cleco the rear spar to the ribs. I decided to work my way from the root to the tip, clecoing one rib at a time. This proved to be a bit challenging, because as straight as I though the ribs were, all the torqueing that was needed to set the primary rivets to the main spar left some of them slightly out of perfect perpedicular alignment. So I had to nudge them into place as I clecoed them. Eventually I got them all to cooperate.

Here is a close up of the inboard aileron hinge assembly all clecoed together. You can see the exit hole for the pushrod that will actuate the aileron. There is also a small bearing sandwiched in between the two hinge halves that will be connected to a bearing when everything is completed.

Next are some shots of the inboard and front of the wing assembly that show the alignment of the 4 inboard wing ribs all squared up, and the tape mess still on the front of the main wing spar after the riveting exercise was done.

It sure was nice to see this coming together, but a review of all the next steps reminded me of just how much work remains before this will really start looking like a completed wing. The rear spar can be reached with the pneumatic squeezer and the flange yoke so at least you don't have to buck any of those rivets. The only problem is that there are two gap seals/supports that are also mounted to the rear spar, but the instructions say to wait to install these until AFTER the top skins are riveted on. I think I am going to at least match drill the holes for these, since many of the holes used to attach them are the same holes attaching the ribs to the rear spar. There are lots of "rivet in assembly with...." steps for attaching the rear spar, so you really have to pay attention to keep from accidentally riveting something together incorrectly.

I had to match drill the holes in the rear flanges of all the ribs anyway, because this was never done previously during the construction of the rear spar and its doublers. Three of the inboard ribs require new holes to be drilled in them by using the spar holes as a guide. I used a #30 drill bit where needed for new holes, and a #30 reamer to finish match drilling the existing holes. Then I deburred all the holes in the ribs and the rear spar and I am just about ready to rivet the rear spar to the ribs of the left wing. Hopefully I will finish that tomorrow in addition to getting most of the riveting done for the right wing ribs to the main spar of the right wing.