Today was another day working on my own so I wasn’t able to work on the false spar. Instead, I decided to go back to section 131 to trim the nose ribs as instructed. I figured this was a good step that I could tackle without a helper and also thought it would be relevant soon since the nose ribs are installed shortly after the false spars are finished (there’s only one step in between).
This was a pretty simple, if repetitive, task using a hand nibbler and seemed to go fine. After removing the prescribed material for each nose rib I used my Dremel tool with a sanding drum to smooth out the cuts and remove major burrs. I then used some 220 grit sandpaper by hand to remove remaining burrs. I tried to cleco the ribs on as I went to help ensure I was trimming the correct number each way (those attached to center ribs were trimmed differently than the others). I didn’t have enough remaining clecos so I had do do all of the main ribs and then all of the remaining.
Some of the trimmed nose ribs attached to the spar
I saved the nose rib that attaches to main rib #8 for last since it needs some additional trimming to fit around the lift strut and so that a drag wire can pass through it. I performed this trimming (and drilled the hole for the drag wire) as instructed in the manual; however, it turns out that the hole needed to be slightly higher to fit the drag wire. Because of that, I had to extend it a bit using a file. It doesn’t look the prettiest but provides sufficient clearance between the parts.
The nose rib attached to center rib #8 and trimmed to fit
This finished section 13 of the manual.
Wing Manual (Extended Fuel), CCEX-004 Rev. 2.02, Pages 79-80 ↩