The main spars 15th October 2006.

Finished off the Horizontal Stabilizer today it took a while as I had lots of other things to do last week.

I have stowed the Vertical and Horizontal stabilizers away for safe keeping and to make room for the wings.

My workbench is almost clear, I started collecting the parts for the wings today.

Next week I will start making the various pieces.

Work starts in earnest 16th of October 2006.

The angle brackets rough cut waiting to be shaped and drilled as accurately as I can.

The spar caps and spar webs, I am glad I don't have to make these pieces.

I needed a rest from making parts so I put my wing spars together, much easier.

These parts go together so nicely and accurately it's a real confidence booster.

Almost there after 2 weeks of making parts I cut everything to about 1mm with a hack saw and then filed to size.

Probably slower than using power tools but it keeps me warm.

The big piece at the front took a while to cut out and really warmed me up, just as well it's still cold here in Bathurst.

Both filed to size, hard work but very satisfying when all the measurements are good.

I had to piece every thing together, not very productive but I had to find out where all this was going.

I installed the spacers between the spar caps and held everything together with large elastic bands while I drilled the holes in the spar caps opposite the spacers, I then put in some clecos and dimpled drilled all the other holes with a pistol drill so I could do all the spar cap drilling with the bench drill. It seems a bit messy but drilling hundreds of holes with a hand held drill would be a pain and also very slow. Those extra long drills are great thanks Doug.

Slowly but surely the spars are coming together, soon lots of counter sinking and lots of solid rivets.

These will be the root rib attach angle brackets made from 2 inch angle aluminium , they have to be bent to the left here by 4 degrees , I think that will do.

I did this with a vice and 2 pieces of water pipe. One piece to put in the angle to widen it and the other piece to put over the handle on the vice to gain more leverage.(It's a very strong old vice I have been abusing it this way for many years.)

More shots of the spars taking shape , things of beauty. In the top right corner you can see where I have been experimenting with the solid rivets. I put a few of them in fine just using a hammer and a large punch, wether I can put a few hundred in the same is another question.

The 17th of November and still working on the main spars.

I hope the canopy is not made out of this stuff as it attracts aluminium like a magnet.

I finally finished the root rib attach brackets I must have been getting too confident as I had to trash three of these rotten things before I finished. They might look simple and they would be if I had read the plans and made myself some notes as to exactly what I had to do. If you are about to make them send me an email and I will let you know the traps to look out for.

There is light at the end of the spar tunnel, all I have to do now is drill all the holes to full size ,debur everything, clean it all up,remove all stress points, get all the stickers off, countersink several hundred holes, dimple several hundred holes and install a dozen nuts and bolts and hundreds of solid rivets. And THEN I might unpack my ribs.

The 24th of December 2006, Yes I will be working on it tomorrow.

Drilling done Countersinking done Dimpling done (On the RH spar) now for the rivets.

Finally the rivets done, well on one spar, the second is only days away. I did all the riveting with a hammer and punch.

I tried several types of pneumatic tools and rivet sets including a special aircraft type on some aluminium scrap and found I could do a much better job with more control, a more consistent set with zero damage to my spar caps and webs using a 2lb hammer and a 1/2 inch punch.

At last the 3rd of January 2007 the spars are finished. I am very pleased with them and I am sure they are strong enough to hold up a house. The rivets all went in OK I am glad I spent time experimenting, If I made another set I would still put them in by hand.