For various reasons I had to take two months off from building. I turned the workshop lights back on a few days ago, and was horrified to find cobwebs on the left wing assembly. I blew them out, reviewed where I was at, and got back to work. The left wing assembly required a similar amount of work to the right wing assembly, after which I tore it all down for priming. While I had it together, I did the preparation for the pitot mast since this is a lot easier to do now than after the wing is riveted together. Overall the work consisted of:
- De-burr gap fairings, skins and wing walk doublers: 3 hours
- Cleco together left wing, including skins and gap fairings: 4 hours
- Match drill skins, gap fairings, countersinking: 6 hours
- Install pitot mast: 2 hours
- Tear everything down, de-burr and dimple (except skins): 8 hours
Now I have a very large heap of parts to prime.
For the pitot, I’m using a Safair1 mast, positioned next to the outboard most inspection panel. To cut the odd shape, I drilled a few holes and expanded them with a step drill, used a rotary burr and then sander to remove most of the material. The die grinder / dremel tools got a bit scary so I tossed them away as I got near the edges, and finished the hole by hand.
I’ve also received the completed fuel tanks and outboard leading edge / aux tank assemblies. Happy enough to have out-sourced these but there’s a few problems to deal with. Both aux tanks have leaks, for example, so I won’t be completely escaping the joys of pro-seal. More on this in a separate post.
