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[December 18, 2005]


This morning I got the rear spar drilled, the ribs drilled and one side of the skin clecoed on. I had a EAA meeting today and last night I found out that my clubs plane was free today, so I snagged it.

I left for the meeting going to KMTN to fly to KDMW. Now, MTN is completely in the opposite direction as DMW, but it is about 35 mins to drive to MTN and 50 mins to DMW. Anyways, I get to our hangar at martin state and find the plane with the cowling off and a spark plug removed. This wasn't looking very airworthy! So I jumped into my truck, knowing that I needed to race over to DMW for the meeting. I called up our clubs CFI and he responds...."oh, you didn't get the email??". Turns out the plane wouldn't start the other day and it was the left mag (starting mag) that went bad.

At the EAA meeting I asked about some of the things I ran into in the plane and Mike Rollison volunteered to stop by over the holidays to check out my HS.

Got home and finished clecoing the skin on. Next I drilled out the skin. Everything was removed, and time to debur. I got all the ribs and spars deburred also.

I saw some holes in the diagram in the doubler, but the manual doesn't mention anything about them. I also saw a lot of web pages of builders that had these holes. Well, the manual doesn't say anything about them, but on the blueprints it has the measurement for the "optional" lighening holes. I went to find my hole cutter I bought a few weeks ago at Harbor Freight tools. I got it out and rear the back instructions fast. "For non-metallic materials only"! What? On the back of the POS in fine print that's what it said. I was pissed. I went to home depot (got there 5 mins before they closed, I was in!) and the people there had no idea what I was talking about. They only had hole drills. Oh well, no biggie, I will just pick one up tomorrow at the home depot by work or the lowes.

The doubler has some pretty nasty edges on it. When it was punched, there are some burrs that stick out 1/32". I had some course emery cloth that I picked up from Home Depot a few weeks ago that I used at first. It worked OK, but it took a lot of work. One one of the sides of the doubler, there it looked like it was just torn off. I drew a line on it with a sharpie to what it should be. I will have to use the angle grinder to get that straight. While I have the angle grinder out, I will go over the whole thing. It would take me forever with the sandpaper and/or files to get it just right. The bench grinder is a little hard to manuever around the double. The angle grinder is a little too loud to break out this time of night, so I will wait until tomorrow. I have busted my ass all weekend on this project.....time to grab a BOH!

VS skin clecoed on


The marks for the lightening holes.


This is a hole cutter I purchased at Harbor Freight a few weeks back. I read the back of it and it said it was only for non-metal materials! AHH!


Here is where it said it. Doesn't even say it on the front...how low.


This is the doubler countersunk.

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Last Modified: August 13, 2023