18 Jun 2024 - 1.5 hours

Back to work on the plane tonight and boy was it hot in the garage after it got up to 95 today. I made a new bending brake out of a 2x6 Southern Yellow Pine board. It worked better than the flimsy board I tried to use earlier, but it still didn't work as well as I wanted it to. I think the short screws that came with the hinges I used didn't hold well so the boards were allowed to come apart and the bend wasn't as sharp as it needed to be, but I couldn't get any more bend out of the brake as the skins were flat together. I can either finish the bend up by hand with some pliers and wood 'soft jaws' or try and rework the bending brake for better results.

Either way, the skins were bent enough to continue with drilling the skin to the structure so I did that. The right root rib did not line up well at all. The bend radius on the flange that rests against the spar was too large so it pushed the holes aft of where they needed to be. I worked a bit to tighten up that radius and that lined the holes up pretty well. Then I fit the WD-605, which also didn't line. up great, but that's expected due to the slight warping during welding. It was close enough that I was able to line the holes up with an ice pick and clecos so I called that close enough.

Here's WD-605 and the ill-fitting root rib all lined up and clecoed together.

Then it was just a matter of match drilling the skin to the skeleton, which went pretty quickly. (Notice the warped reflection on the trailing edge bend where I couldn't get it bent enough)

That's where I stopped for the night even though there were some small easy tasks next on the instructions. I'll save those for next time!