Excellent Progress

Yesterday a 5 ft long piece of Spruce arrived on the front porch.  Perfect timing since today was going to be in the mid 50's. Not bad for December!  I got to work this afternoon, starting with finishing the cuts in the existing trailing edge.  Finishing the inboard side went alright and cutting the outboard side was a breeze. Here is the trailing edge pieces cut:

Then I cut the new piece of spruce to length and laid out the scarfs for it.  With a nice sharp blade on the plane it took very little time to get the scarfs cut for the new piece.  Helps when the piece is just clamped to the bench and not flopping around on the glider with ribs in the way.

Next I started thinking about ways to get the ribs straightened out.  I also knew I was going to need to get the ribs out of the way in order to glue in the new trailing edge.  I notched some 1x2's with the table saw to act as a sort of jig for the ribs to force them into a straight-ish orientation.  It actually worked out pretty well and I think when the time comes will work alright for getting things lined up.  I also removed the vertical stiffeners and cut the trailing edges of the existing ribs in order to get them to move out of the way for the trailing edge.  Here is the jigs in place:

With the ribs able to move now I had to go get some supplies for epoxying. Namely, dixie cups and paint brushes.  Then I clamped the aluminum angle firmly in place.  It worked as a nice guide in my attempt to keep the trailing edge square and straight.  Worked out a clamping scheme and mixed up the epoxy and put everything in its place.  Then for grins I glued in the remaining bits of the false ribs so I'll have plenty of clamps to remove in the morning.