A day ago my friend and I mounted the wing tips on to the wings. That was step one of a multi-step process to attach the wingtips using piano hinges. In image one you can see the wingtip on the wing. At this stage the wingtip flange is inserted under the wing skin and I have drilled through the fiberglass flange using the wing skin pre-punched holes as drill guides. To get to the point you can see in image two was several steps. I will try to recapture that process here.
The hinges will ultimately be riveted to the skin and to the wing tip. The first step was to measure the curve of the wing to determine the length of the hinge. The top hinge was cut at 43" and the bottom hinge at 41.5".
The prepunched holes are spaced for #6 screws which is too wide for rivets. I doubled the number of holes by measuring half way inbetween each prepunched hold. Interesting they were not equal distances apart. With the wing tip still in place I drilled the additional holes. Then I pulled the wing tip off the aircraft and clamped the hinge inside of the wingtip.
Working at the bench back drilled the hinge to match the skin clecoing each hole as I drilled to ensure a snug fit. I had measured centerline to centerline of the hinge flanges at 0.85" I measure over 0.85" and marked the location for the rivets for the outside flange of the hinge. You can see the marks on the skin in image two to get an idea of what I am trying to describe. After mark the rivet locations I drilled through the wingtip fiberclass and through the hinge flange.
After removing all the clecos I cut off the fiberglass flange that had been inside the wing tip. It became a spacer between the skin and the hinge to ensure a flush fit. The fiberglass wingtip is thicker than the skin. If I installed the wingtips with just the hinge the wingtip edge would be above the wing skin. By placing the fiberglass spacer under the wing skin side of the hingeI lower the wingtip to just below the skin. If you look closely at image three you can s
