Wings skeletons complete. 12 hours - 192 hours total

After all the time spent in preparation with the wing ribs, it was really nice to finally see some progress.

The  priming of all the pieces went smoothly, I am getting much better at that bit.

And the assembly goes very quickly and easily with most of the rivets being the LP4-4 blind type.

Here are all the ribs straightened and painted ready for assembly

Assembly of the rear ribs was really easy

And I did both wings at the same time

That went so well, and so quick and easy that I just went right on and finished the front ribs also, for both wings.

Next step is to prep all the wing skins, which will take a little while since there are thousands of holes to deburr.

I also need to order some more primer.

Once that's done the rest of the assembly of the wings should go pretty quick.

I should really order the next kit now otherwise I'll have nothing to do !

Wings started. 63 hours - 180 hours total

I've been busy all summer at work, no weekends spare even, but I did get started on the wings.
Actually the first thing to do was tidy up the workshop and store all the Empennage and tailbone finished parts.

I found places on the walls to hang the control surfaces, and made a rack on the ceiling to get the tailbone out of the way.

I also built the wing worktable out of the tailbone crate and some scrap carpet.

The first steps for making the wings are to prepare some parts for the wing spars and hinges for the flaperons etc.
Here are all those parts layed out ready to deburr, match drill, final drill etc.

That was pretty easy, fairly standard stuff now that I've had some practice.
There were quite a few countersinks to make along the flanges of the spar doublers, and the flanges are at odd angles, so I made a jig to hold the pieces square in the drill press.

I scuffed up the parts ready to prime before assembly.
At this point I could have assembled some parts, but I wanted to get on with the dreaded wing ribs, so I left all the riveting for later.
Here are the parts primed and ready for assembly.

The wing ribs are the hardest part so far.
It's not that there's anything new or special to do, it's just that there's a LOT of it.
Deburr, Deburr, Deburr, Deburr.
Thousands of rivet holes to deburr, nearly all of them hard to reach on the inside of flanges.
Also the edges of the ribs are scalloped making it more work to deburr them too.
Plus each rib has 3 or more large "lightening" holes, which do as the name suggests, they make the part "lighter", while preserving strength, all of those have to be debarred also.
And to make matters worse, these are the nastiest cut pieces so far, with many tools marks and shape edges compared to the kit parts I have done before.
I suppose Vans must have used the nice new CNC machines for the other parts, and I can only guess, but perhaps some sort of old dull bladed chain saw to cut these parts ? :)

Here they are stacked and waiting...

So, anyway, with work getting in the way, its taken a quite a while to get these done.
Once they were deburred they needed to be straightened by fluting, which was actually pretty easy.
Next job is to clean them and scuff them up and finally prime them.
Then the fun begins and I can start assembly of the wing skeletons.