Sat Sep 15 2007

Flap and aileron component deburring

Well it's too cool today to do priming, so I decided to do some miscellaneous wing work instead. I started by drilling the screw holes for the access covers to the correct size for the #6 (spar) and #8 (skin) attach holes. I dimpled all the #6 holes and started dimpling the #8 holes, but stopped when I noticed that my dimple dies were leaving marks in the surface of the aluminum.

You can see the marks around this dimple here. I had ground down the sides of the dimple die somewhat to fit between the nutplate dimples on the skin. I needed to order a new 3/32 countersink anyway, so I ordered a replacement set of dimple dies. I'll still keep the old ones...they'll be handy for dimpling any time I have clearance issues, but if there's no nearby obstruction, I'll use the new ones.

I'll finish up dimpling these covers when the dies come in next week.

I spent the rest of the day deburring (nearly) all the remaining flap and aileron components. This photo represents about 7 hours work.

This is pretty much all that's left to debur on the wing kit. I really wanted to get these done, but my back was aching by this time, so I called it a night.

One last thing...for these components I've reverted to my way-too-anal deburring method which means a lot of detail work with the needle file to get all the bend reliefs nicely deburred. You can see the one bracket I deburred on the top and one of the untouched ones on the bottom. The flaps and ailerons are potentially gonna see a lot of vibration, so I want to make sure I don't get cracks. Maybe it's not necessary to go to all this trouble (probably not), but what the heck, it's my airplane...I'll do it the way I want. :-)