Tue Apr 24 2007

Rear spar assembly; main spar deburring

I assembled the right rear spar tonight. When I did the left rear spar, I just had it on the bench. I had some difficulty getting a square angle on the rivet with my squeezer, so I wanted to try clamping my squeezer in the vise this time. The problem is that when working at one end of the spar, how would I support the other end?

I ended up using a piece of rope tied around one of the floor trusses to support the far end of the spar. It worked great and having the squeezer in the vise made it a lot easier to get the squeezer square with the rivets.

Here's the completed right rear spar.

I also realized I hadn't deburred all the main spar flange rivet holes, so I took some time to deburr all of those.

On three of the wing walk ribs, the center two of four holes don't match up with the rear spar and doubler holes. Here's a photo where I've marked the correct hole locations through the rear spar at zero and 1 3/4 inches.

Here's another of the wing walk ribs where I've marked the holes at zero and 1 1/2 inches. I was a little concerned about drilling new holes in this case because the center to center distance looks kinda close. I called Van's and talked to Bruce. He looked at the photos and told me this was OK.

On the second-to-inboard most rib, there is only one hole that needs drilled in the rib flange. I didn't get a photo of this.