Tweet
Hi gang,
I finally got back into the rebuild of NC20407 last weekend. Some of you may remember that I had my wings rebuilt due to lack of time. They have been hanging in the garage for nearly two years now. In preparation for aileron work I wanted to hang the RH wing (the original 13 rib 1938 wing) on the plane. Rounded the help up to set in into place………what a disappointment that exercise was! Root fittings were 3/32” to narrow to fit the fuse fittings. I spent a couple hours with the tape checking out the various compression strut fittings on both wings. As far as I can tell, the 1938 wing panel (and 1941) has only (2) different size compression struts. The short (1) being at the lift strut fittings because of the ply doublers. Seems like Mr. Goodwrench ignored the torque values on the root fitting fasteners and sunk the fittings/compression strut into the wood on both spars. It fit perfect before the rebuild! After getting over the disappointment of knowing I now had to at least partially disassemble the wing(s), I tore into the RH wing and am glad I did. Notice anything missing on either spar end…..like ply doublers! No ply doubler on that aft spar(for some reason) reminded me of the root fittings on a Henderson Longster. The guy two owners back regularly did aerobatics in this ship! That gave me a shiver.
I scratched my bald noggin for a while thinking how I was going to add doublers. After much fussing, I finally set my skillsaw to a depth of 1/16” and scored the spar face every ¼”. I then carefully chisled the stock off to the depth of the score lines. Finally, I used my palm sander and belt sander to just remove the score lines. The nose roller of the belt sander gave a blend radius that matched that of the jointed relief of the ‘41 spars perfectly. It actually worked out very well and I did not have to disassemble the entire wing. I took careful measurements of the 1941 wing (LH) and made 1/16” ply doublers to match. Glued up the inside doublers last night. I will work on the outside surfaces tonite. I will take some more pics of the scoring process tonite if anyone is interested.
Feels good to finally be making progress on 20407 again!
I finally got back into the rebuild of NC20407 last weekend. Some of you may remember that I had my wings rebuilt due to lack of time. They have been hanging in the garage for nearly two years now. In preparation for aileron work I wanted to hang the RH wing (the original 13 rib 1938 wing) on the plane. Rounded the help up to set in into place………what a disappointment that exercise was! Root fittings were 3/32” to narrow to fit the fuse fittings. I spent a couple hours with the tape checking out the various compression strut fittings on both wings. As far as I can tell, the 1938 wing panel (and 1941) has only (2) different size compression struts. The short (1) being at the lift strut fittings because of the ply doublers. Seems like Mr. Goodwrench ignored the torque values on the root fitting fasteners and sunk the fittings/compression strut into the wood on both spars. It fit perfect before the rebuild! After getting over the disappointment of knowing I now had to at least partially disassemble the wing(s), I tore into the RH wing and am glad I did. Notice anything missing on either spar end…..like ply doublers! No ply doubler on that aft spar(for some reason) reminded me of the root fittings on a Henderson Longster. The guy two owners back regularly did aerobatics in this ship! That gave me a shiver.
I scratched my bald noggin for a while thinking how I was going to add doublers. After much fussing, I finally set my skillsaw to a depth of 1/16” and scored the spar face every ¼”. I then carefully chisled the stock off to the depth of the score lines. Finally, I used my palm sander and belt sander to just remove the score lines. The nose roller of the belt sander gave a blend radius that matched that of the jointed relief of the ‘41 spars perfectly. It actually worked out very well and I did not have to disassemble the entire wing. I took careful measurements of the 1941 wing (LH) and made 1/16” ply doublers to match. Glued up the inside doublers last night. I will work on the outside surfaces tonite. I will take some more pics of the scoring process tonite if anyone is interested.
Feels good to finally be making progress on 20407 again!
Attached Files
Comment