Jan. 28th, 2004
Tonight was night #2 of building.
Last night I was initially caught off guard by the fact that step #1 of
construction involves fabricating the vertical stab
spar caps from angle aluminum. I hate cutting thick metal and was
hoping that some of those things would be pre-fab'd
but I was wrong on this one. Then I resigned myself that it was
going to happen often and stepped up to the challenge.
By the time I got done a while later, I had a couple of great looking
spar endcaps made up.
Tonight I wasn't so lucky. I clamped the pieces in place using
some regular clamps. Turns out I'll never use those clamps
again for critically fit pieces. When I got done drilling all of
my holes, I found that the bend in the spar cap left a gap
between it and the spar. Part # VS-1014R, for those who know the
numbers. So I finished up the other side
and decided to get up in the a.m. and see if Van's can overnight
one. Probably not worth the freight, but if it lets me get
a day in this weekend I'll be happy.
Here's those cheap-assed clamps I used.

Here's one of them cleco'd down and looking nice.

Now from here you can see the gap a bit.

I intentionally left most of the clecos out so you can really see the
defect. On the right side you
see the gap that was left. Sure, I could just rivet it together,
but I figure anything attached to
a spar directly is probably something to be a perfectionist about, and
I'm not going to start off this
project leaving something like this. Whatever the cost, I'm
getting a new piece of aluminum stock.

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