Brief Description: Finally working on a plane part!
Tonight I stopped by the shop for just a few minutes before heading home. I was pretty tired and ready to go. However, I just wanted to do one little thing.... does this sound familiar to any other builders? Two hours later I made it out the door and headed home. What got my attention? My first work on an airplane part. Wahoo!
As I might have mentioned in a prior post, a couple of the rib fixtures (jigs) that arrived from Bill Scheunemann were broken in transit. Not a big deal. Bill was great about replacing them. But, it gave me the opportunity to practice my building technique without trashing a real fixture.
In the photos below you'll see the cap strips cut to length and the diagonals. I've sent these photos to Bill so he can give me some perspecitve on how fussy I need to be with fitting the parts. I believe that the gussets carry all the load between the cap strips and the diagonals and I've heard that you can just trim the ends of the diagonals square and not fit them in the joints but... I want to hear it from Bill.
The jigs give me great confidence that the ribs will be identical and very accurate. Once again, I'm pleased with the quality and the value of the parts provided by Bill.
Overall view of the broken jig with my cut parts installed.
A look at the fit of the diagonals
A gap in the bottom right corner of this diagonal. Is it ok?
