Having a Rib Party

[Chris In Milwaukee]

First half of the center ribs have their lightening holes flanged.




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[Chris In Milwaukee]

Wrapped up the center rib lightening holes today. Looking fabulous.





Also started the small stuff. I opted to go with the flap nose ribs next. The press is large enough now, and the parts are small enough, that I was able to do two at a time.







The rubber mats I'm using don't flow well around the small parts, so I had to massage them a little bit.



So off to the good ol' trusty Vans rib straightener.









Good to go! Ready to move to aileron nose and pockets.


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[Chris In Milwaukee]

Same technique for the aileron nose ribs.












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[Chris In Milwaukee]

Well, this is the last of the little guys. Aileron pocket ribs are wrapped up. Like the others, I was able to press both sides at the same time.





Because of the inside radius, I couldn't use the Vans method. So I broke out my seaming pliers and my lineman's pliers and did them that way.





What to do next? Oh yes, full-length ribs. Have to create the routing form for them, cut them out, and then flange them.


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[Deftone]

On the vans rib straightener did you go with the same 11deg angle as the vans guys or did you find something better? I am going to knock one up tomorrow and was planning on going with 11deg.

[Chris In Milwaukee]

Sure did. 11 degrees works perfectly.

[Chris In Milwaukee]

So finally got the last of everything cut and lightening holes flanges today. The full-length ribs were the last to be done. They hadn't yet been cut out because I hadn't made the routing jig yet. So I picked up a new sheet of MDF, traced the master routing template onto it, and cut/routed out a pair of routing jigs.





Got the aluminum roughs loaded up and ready to go, and then routed them out. Amazing how quick and easy two sheets goes than ten!







Probably should have thought twice about routing these things while wearing a fleece. Going to take a while to pick the shavings out of it.



Got them in the press to flange the lightening holes, wrapping up all the lightening hole adventures.



Time to move on to edge flanging.


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