Left Wing with Right Ribs, August 11, 2008

This was to be a great day of riveting and indeed it started out strong. Starting on 15-03, I completed the W1210B-L & R Rib Doublers with no problems and moved on to 15-04 which called for riveting the main ribs to the spar. This went quickly with no difficulties. It was a bit of challenge to rivet the ribs to the spars and hold the head of the rivet gun flush against the rivet.

After attaching all main ribs, match-hole drilling was called for to attach the rear spar assembly to the ribs. With careful reading so as not to drill the wrong holes, this went well too.

Next, on page 15-05, nose ribs attach to the main spar. The first 4 ribs I attached were W1208-L thinking that these would naturally go with the Left spar. Wrong! This was the first serious rivet removal work I had to do. Then, to make matters worse, once I got into the ribs that had an aft flange to attach to the spar, I continued using LP4-3 rivets, making great progress. At some point, after installing 5 more ribs, I realized I should be using LP4-4 rivets! After a choice word or two, I set about drilling these rivets out also and spent the remainder of the time doing this. In the process I scratched up some of the ribs. A call to Van's tomorrow to ask about replacement ribs.