25 Jan 2025 - 2.5 hours

It's been very cold here lately so I haven't exactly been motivated to get out in the garage and work. Today the temperature made it above 30 for the first time in weeks so I got out there and started on the wings!

First thing I had to do was get the spars down from the garage rafters. I did some rearranging and put the elevators and rudder up there where the spars were to free up some space and keep them safe.

I set them out on some workout flooring to inspect them for damage and mark their orientation so I don't get confused.

The first thing you actually do to the spars is nutplates...lots of nutplates. In fact, there 148 nutplates between the two wing spars that need to go on. I started by drilling the rivet holes that will hold the nutplates on to #40. I did the right spar up on the work table. That was uncomfortably high.

I did the left spar on the ground. That was uncomfortably low.

After match drilling the rivet holes, I did the countersinking on the old dresser/file cabinet thing that now has a wood surface just sitting on top. This was the most comfortable height to work that I found.

Here is the left spar all countersunk. The next step will be to prime the countersinks where the anodizing was removed, then rivet on the nutplates, then countersink for the screw heads, then prime those countersinks. This honestly went pretty quickly and didn't take as long as I thought it would. On the horizon, though, is preparing all the wings ribs, which will take forever...