Here is the tooling I made to do my wing ribs. On the right is the forming tool for all the ribs. I had the drawing printed in full size and I glued it onto a piece of maple. In my trade this is called a slapping block. On the left side is the master template for cutting all the blanks for the wing..
The master template has jig pin holes for aligning the blanks for the ribs. I place up to 3 rib blanks at a time on the master. Then I covered the blanks with the plywood protectors and proceeded to use a router to cut the ribs. It took about 3 minutes to cut the ribs. The pins keep the blanks, master and protector aligned while I am cutting. This system allowed me to standardize every rib type so that when I assembled the wing, I only had to choose ribs based on which way they were flanged.
The second picture is of the finished ribs ready to the next step.
Thank you S Lathrop. I have to wait until Wednesday to buy anymore material, but I think I will move onto lightning holes next and just deal with the ribs I have
I did all the cutting at once. I then flanged the ribs. Next is to take the fluting pliers and straighten the ribs.
I used a system of upset dies to flange the holes in a press. See the picture. I used this system because the pressing process helps flatten the rib. The finished rib at the top of the picture is formed using the dies formed from 1/8th aluminum plate. The wood piece at the bottom fits inside the rib with the rib shaped aluminum piece. The 2 aluminum disks are placed on the outside of the rib. Everything is aligned with dowel pins. The final step is to press the rib and the forming tools against another piece of wood Note that the wood block at the bottom is notched for the flutes on the rib. Having the inner wood block as tight a fit as possible helps flatten the rib during the pressing process.
Another question. We are going to layout drawing number 7 but what I'm wondering is how many full size ribs are there at the end of the wing? Eric doesn't really spell that out.
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