Yes, the holes should be lined up, the web lie flat and be 90* to the flange. It takes judicious use of the seamers, fluting pliers, and patience. It will probably take a while to get the hang of it (I'm looking forward to that timepilot28906 said:
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What Van is really saying is "Don't overcomplicate it." Fluting ribs took me on average, all of one minute per rib. The end game here is to line up the holes in the rib and skin without "preloading" either part so you just need to flute as required. First, by using a hand seamer on the flange you can eyeball it to a reasonably square condition within a few degrees. By all means, use a squaring tool to verify a 90 degree angle if it doesn't seem quite right. Then comes the easy part.... I just laid a rib down on a smooth surface, noted the location of the bow and fluted key locations on the rib until it flattened itself out. You can do this without actually touching the rib with your hands. A trick I use is to generate a few flutes on the upper surface, then rotate the part around and flute a few locations on the lower surface. This seems to help flatten the rib evenly. The ribs are all different. Some ribs took lots of flutes to straighten, others just a few. After a while, you sort of develop a feel for how much force to apply to the fluting pliers to generate a shallow flute or a deep flute as required. Note how few flutes were really needed to straighten the rib in the bottom right photo. If it takes more than 2 or 3 minutes to flute any one rib, adopting a more efficient technique might save yourself considerable and needless tedium.BruceP said:
