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Parts coming together

Now that my spars were ready to recieve ribs, I had a little more work to do the ribs. Ribs 5 and 9 get 1/8" deep cutouts to make room for drag-wire brackets that go between the rib and the spar. These brackets hold the end of threaded rods called drag wires and anti-drag wires which form an x-brace pattern within the wing and take any loads that would rack the wing out-of-square.
 
I started trying to cut these slots with an x-acto saw but it took way too long, so I tried whittling it away with an x-acto knife. This took even longer. I finally realized that I had a scroll saw in the garage and made short work of the rest of the slots. 
And then, just as I finished up the last slot I realized I'd accidentally grabbed rib 13 instead of 9.
So, another mistake needed to be corrected. Rib 9 got the appropriate slot cut and was ready to go. Rib 13 had to have the mis-cut member replaces. This entailed removing the gussets in a similar process to removing the spar plates from the last post. Nails were pulled, gussets mostly removed with a sharp chisel, and the last bit scraped away. The notched member was cut out, epoxy cleaned up, and a new one glued in with fresh gussets. A little bit of cleanup and I was able to slide all of the ribs for the left wing onto the spars for the first time. Starting to look like something! 
Time lost to the rib repairs: 2.25hrs 
Total time to date: 165.1hrs.



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