Category: Wings

Today I worked on deburring the top side of the left hand wing skin. I also sanded out some of the small marks left by the clecos and then used scotch brite to clean them up. I turned the skin over and removed the protective coating from the inside of the skin in preparation to deburr the inside.

I up drilled the last remaining hole in the bottom of my wing spar to #30 then I put the spar away temporarily. With my bench freed up I began deburring the bottom wing skin. I used some scotch brite on a few of the marks left by the clecos. I think the key thing for the second wing is not to rest the wing on the clecos. The marks weren’t bad and using a bit of 220 grit sand paper plus the scotch brite, all were easily removed. I also cleaned up the plastic protective covering around the access hole. I manged to get all of the #30 holes deburred on the lower left wing skin. The only thing left to do is drill out the hole for the tie down. This I’ll save for next time.

It’s been a while since I worked on the plane. Work and family have taken there toll on my available time. Tonight I was back working on the wing spar. When drilling the rivet holes in the spar cap I nicked the edge of one of the web doublers near the root of the wing. I sent photos to Sonex and they advised simply cleaning up the nicks with sandpaper. They said the nicks would not cause any problem. This makes sense as they are outside of the rivet line. As long as there are no stress risers I would not expect a problem either. In order to clean up the nicks I decided to remove a few rivets. I figured they would probably get damaged anyways and sanding without them would be easier. I drilled out the heads and then punched the rivets out. This was pretty easy and quick. Next I used sand paper wrapped around a cut off tongue depressor to sand the edge of the doubler. I cleaned up three of the four nicks. I should be able to finish the last one in the next work session.