Ribs

The last few nights with some help from Leah and Matt G we've started to put ribs back in the right wing.  I ordered some more wood from Aircraft Spruce to re-do the trailing edge and to rebuild the area around the airbrake as well as add all the necessary stiffeners to the ribs.  I need to work on the profiles of the ribs now and will need to get the last two false ribs built up to the right shape so they can be removed and used as templates.  Previously they were way undersized which lead to the leading edge skin separating from them, especially on the lower surface.

We moved the fuselage for YYY into the garage today and I did some sanding work on Leah's cedar rowing shell.  We had a really nice day here today with light winds and t-shirt weather in the afternoon.

Here is the current state of the right wing. The two false ribs on the right side are the ones that still need to be replaced.  The rib on the right where the plywood ends is the one that I broke the bottom off aft of the aft spar.  Will scarf in a new piece to replace that rather than completely replacing the rib.

Sawdust

Not a lot to report lately so there haven't been many updates.  Matt G and I did cut out a few ribs after making templates from a set of ribs that I found online.  Used the router I got over thanksgiving and learned that I really needed a router table to do a semi-quality job.  So I very slowly gathered the wood I needed to make a router table and ended up with a pretty nice 4 foot long by 1 foot wide table that the router mounts to.  Tonight I finally got it all finished up and put it to work.  I had two full size ribs that I needed to re-do so I nailed the first one to the new plywood and started cutting. It went great until almost the end when the template became detached and the new piece was ruined. Drats!  I had almost exactly enough plywood to just do the two pieces and no more so I had to make sure to do it right.  Thankfully with some luck (or my incredible skill) I managed to not screw up the pieces and I now have two very nice new ribs to install on the glider.

Plan is to work the next few days on getting the new ribs in place and then I'll finish tweaking the profile of the two false ribs that need replaced.  I have enough scraps large enough to make those I think.  Then I will have all the ribs replaced and can start working on putting the airbrake box back together and then eventually new skin.  I am starting to see the light at the end of this repair!