HS Construction Continued

The last couple of sessions in the factory have seen some real progress. Parts are starting to take shape, and I seem to be finding my rhythm. I drilled most of the holes for the rear spar, and cleaned up all the edges. Deburring and edge finishing is tedious work, and not all that enjoyable. However, it must be done and it's not so bad if you have some good music to keep you going (thanks Pandora!).

I'm at the point with the rear spar that I am ready to prime the VA-146 bearing. A trip to Sherwin Williams produced a one gallon can of P60G2 primer and catalyst, but they didn't have the recommended thinner\cleaner. I had them order a couple gallons of the cleaner and until it arrives, I'm going to skip ahead a bit and continue with as much of the construction as possible. With any luck, by the time the cleaner arrives, I'll have a stack of parts ready to prime. I could have used a different thinner, but I'd be pretty upset if my brand new HPLV spray gun was ruined after the first use. Below is a picture of one half of the rear spar with the doublers clecoed in place.


The construction of the front spar is well underway. The bends in the HS-710 and HS-714 were pretty straight forward. I cut a six degree template out of cardboard and stuck the parts in the vise, and bent them by hand. Bending the front spar tabs (HS-702) was a little more difficult, but they turned out well.

The last half of today's work session was devoted to edge finishing and deburring of the HS ribs. This picture shows the temporarily assembled front spar in the middle of the bench and in the lower right corner you can see all of the HS ribs prepped and ready to begin the skeleton construction.