Dave's Sonex Builders Log

I completed the trimming of the rear ribs today. I also drilled all of the pilot holes for fly cutting the lightening holes and drilled the tooling holes.

I completed trimming five main or rear rib blanks tonight. I also trimmed the front and rear flanges of all of the rear rib blanks. Only 21 more to trim. Hopefully, tommorrow I should get these done.

Completed drilling the corner relief holes. Next I cut out the corners of all of the ribs. The next step will be to trim the remaining four sides of all the main ribs.

Drilled a bunch more corner relief holes in the main ribs tonight. I only have 6 left to finish.

My hole flanging dies arrived today from Sonex. I tried flanging the lightening holes in the nose ribs. It seems to work okay but the ribs that started out flat are now slightly dished. I don’t know if this is okay or if I’m doing something wrong.

I started to drill the corner relief holes in the main rib blanks today. This is a very slow process, drilling four holes per blank.

This morning I completed the hammer forming of the nose ribs. I think I have one extra so I won’t need to rebuild one of my early attempts that did not turn out. I still need to flange the holes. I ordered the flanging tool last week from Sonex so hopefully it will arive next week sometime.

Two sessions of forming ribs today. I now have only 10 left to form.

40 minutes and 4 more nose ribs tonight. I’ve got it down to 10 minutes per rib. I guess that means a total of 260 minutes to form all 26. Only 4 hrs and 10 minutes.

More forming of nose ribs today. I managed to get four made in one hour. This is going to take a while but they are now turning out well.