December update
Work continued this fall on finishing both flaps, the aileron pushrods and bellcranks and the pitot mast hole and doubler.
Flap construction process is simple. Spars, ribs and skins. All need to be fitted, drilled deburred and dimpled like many other components.
Oops... For the second time (see the Vertical Stabiliser), I did a figure 8 with the dimpler... Again, I enlarged the spar and skin holes to 3/16 and dimpled accordingly.
Here, all the internal flap parts except the spars and the skins.
Don't forget to rivet the flap ribs to the rear "spar" of the skin. These rivets are done first without the top skin installed otherwise they could not be reached on both sides.
The next step is a bit challenging as I have relatively quite large hands. Ribs and flap skins get riveted together. I used a small tungsten bar inside and the rivet gun outside. I finished with bruised knukles from rubbing my hand inside the flap skin.
A view of the complete left flap. I now have installed more than 5000 rivets since the empennage. Since all sub-assemblies have temporary rivets, that number should be higher at this stage.
After priming the inside of the pushrods, threaded inserts are hammered in. The fit is very, very tight. USE LUBRICANT AND DON'T TAP TOO HARD ON THE ROD ENDS, YOU RISK DAMAGE TO THE FIRST THREADS. Guess how I know...
Rivets, locknuts and end bearings installed. On one of the threaded rod ends, I had to cut off about 1/16 inch and tap the thread at the start because of my too intense hammering had flattened it and I could'nt fit the end bearing...
Use Boelube lubricant and go easy with just enough pressure to insert those threaded rod ends.
After priming inside and out of the long pushrods, the rod ends are riveted and the bearings are threaded in to the plan's call of 72 inches and 11/16. These will be adjusted more precisely when the wings are installed on the fuselage.
These are the bellcranks that will later connect the two pushrods.
Brass sleeves and AN bolts will hold them to brackets on the main wing spars.
The bellcranks and sleeves need just a touch of reaming so all parts fit nice and snug with no gripping or looseness.
I used two different sizes of round files and a little elbow grease for this.
The bellcranks and the brass sleeves will need to be shortened a little to fit correctly between the wing brackets.
All the aileron bellcrank hardware are prepared for installation on the wings. This involved cutting the bellcrank's tubes and their brass bushings to fit between the wing brackets. The brass bushings are kept about 1/32 longer than the bellcrank. Two small aluminium bushings are also made from stock tubing. All bolt holes are final drilled to size.
The aileron bellcrank is installed.
The top bracket needs to be removed to insert the longest bolt.
Don't forget to grease the brass bushing before closing the wing.
As a standard safety practice, the bolts are installed with their heads on top and the nuts on bottom. The bellcrank is seen here from below.
Only the small pushrod is installed for now.
Also seen here is the black wiring tube running spanwise, and the stall warning wire sticking out from the spar.