Practice Kit Part 3

Finished fitting the stiffeners to the skins tonight, including dimpling both the stiffeners and the skins. The DRDT-2 is so easy to use, and produces an excellent finish using my Cleveland Aircraft dimple dies. I found out later that I made a mistake in this step. I didn’t test fit the skins together with stiffeners and trailing edge wedge in place. If I had done, I would have found two of the stiffeners to be too long, overlapping with the trailing edge wedge. The stiffeners need to be trimmed, and on one skin they need to be trimmed more than is immediately apparent from the instructions and markings on the material.

I also fitted the spar doublers and ribs to the spar, match drilled everything, then disassembled and deburred all the parts.

With that done, I match drilled the skins to the ribs, and drilled the trailing edge wedge. Doing this without the recommended double-sided tape is a mistake. The tried taping the wedge in position with rivet tape, but it wasn’t strong enough and slipped a few times. At this point I disassembled and deburred everything, thinking I would next prime the parts and then assemble.