KMinor,
Hang tough buddy!
I had to park my project about 10 days ago, but that was the last step I completed before I did.
I'm at the Fire House tonight or else I would go out in the garage and re-do some pics of how I did mine. It was really easy, but I'm not to proud to tell you that I do a lot of stealing ideas from others build sites.
Let me try to walk you through what I did from memory and a couple pics I took along the way.
1) I gently held the the rib in the vise and marked the center of the flange all the way around.
2) I stuck the rib in the skin and marked on the flanges through all the holes in the skin with a sharpie so I knew where the holes will be on the rib flange allowing me to know where to flute (in between the holes) to get the rib to lye flat.
3) I fluted the rib flat.
4) I put the rib back in the skin where it will live the rest of it's life and secured it down flush with the edge of the skin the best I could with the tools I have available.
You can look through the skin holes at this point and have confidence that with the line you drew on the center of the flange lined up with the holes, the rib web should be pretty close to flush with the edge of the skin. And that's the last time you'll see that line until after all the holes are drilled in the rib.
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Here's where you got to look at your call out manual for the sequence. I don't have mine with me, but I think I
5) back drilled the aft flange through the spar at this point.
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That makes sense cause on the next pic above I removed all that clamping mess.
6) Next I clamped the joint plate to the skin by wedging one jaw of the cleco clamp in between the skin and rib with the other jaw holding the joint plate to the outside of the skin. I did this with a few clamps as seen in the pic. This is to pre-form the bend in the joint plate.
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I just rubbed my hand right around the leading edge folding the joint plate around with it, being careful that it didn't make a crazy turn away from the edge of the skin. The first time I ended up with excess joint plate close the the spar and not enough plate at the other end. It was easy to manipulate the plate to make up the difference and have it come out with the same on both ends of the plate (this must sound confusing but trust me it was easy).
I unclamped the plate and inserted it between the rib and skin, just as the call out directs us to do. I didn't even need a soft mallet, I just bumped it with the palm of my hand as needed as I went around the rib.
Yes the rib moved all over the place, but the clecos through the spar held the aft end of the rib in place.
7) Ok, I used my steel ruler and marked the 11/16" (I'm using that figure off your post cause I don't remember what it was in the book) point on the ruler with the sharpie.
I started with the aft bottom hole. I measured the edge of the skin to the edge of the joint plate, then measured the web of the rib to the edge of the joint plate.
8) When I had 11/16" from the edge of the joint plate to both edge of skin, and rib web, I drilled the first hole.
Having that first hole cleco'd made the rest of the run comforting to me. I measured and drilled the next two holes.
9) Then I moved to the top of the leading edge and repeated starting at the hole closest to the spar working towards the leading edge.
At this point I had 3 holes drilled and cleco'd on the bottom, and 3 on the top.
10) From there I would do 3 or 4 on one side, then repeat on the other working my way towards the leading edge.
I used my steel ruler and measured every single hole all the way. The joint plate seemed to stay in place pretty well, but the rib tended to want to wander a bit.
I grabbed the rib through one of the two lightening holes and forced it as hard as it would take then drill to have that 11/16" distance work out on each hole. If you let that distance wander too far, it takes a lot of force and a couple holes to get it back, and in the mean time your having edge distance issues on the rib that are not visible to you at the time.
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In hind sight, you don't even need to draw that center line on the rib flange, cause when the drill hits the metal you can't see it anyway.
The key to this operation is that 11/16" measurement. If you got it on both sides of the joint plate (rib & LE skin) your money.
This is very wordy I know. But I hope it helps you out.
We got to get these wings done. They're so boring (however I'm loving it!).
Good Luck friend.
Tom