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[November 20, 2006]


Today at work I cut the 0.025 sheet to length with the shear. However, it's max width is 24" and I had a 26" wide piece of sheet that needed to be reduced to 9 3/8". I saw that some other people just leave it 10", so that was what I planned to do. I got home and clamped it to the top skin and match drilled it. I was convinced it would work fine until the last drill hole. This is the lower tip hole, which if the sheet was 9 3/8", wouldn't need to be drilled. And it would of caused some edge distance issues. So, with the aviation snips in hand, I cut off 5/8" of the doubler. Done and done.

Next was the fun part -- to cleco on the top skin of the left wing. It took a while, but it was worth it. Next I made some brackets to secure the lower part of the wing. I wanted to have the skin on to do this because the lower spar could rock back and forth without the skin on. Now that the skin is on, I no longer have a parallelogram, but a rectangle. I used some 1.5" 1/8" thick aluminum angle and some scrap 1/8" sheet from work cut to 3" wide strips to make some attachments for the lower spar.

Next I tried to level and detwist the wing, but I got frustrated with the digital level and decided it was time to call it a night.

The doubler cut.


I marked a line on the bottom of the top skin at the setback that the doubler gets set to.


This is the hole on the lower tip that is close to the edge. The vertical line on the right is the 9 3/8" mark where Van's recommends it be cut at. I see now why 10" won't do.


Tada! It took quite a bit of work to get all those clecos in.


The sheet I "borrowed" from work. hehe.


This is the bracket for the lower root.


I don't have any screws, so why not rivet it?


After checking with Van's, the proper rivet is the AN470AD4-6.


I covered the top of the bracket with masking tape so I wouldn't scratch up the spar.


The tip bracket took some more creativity. I stole this clamping idea from Chad Jenson.


The root clamped in.


This is a shot at how close the doubler comes to the main wing spar. The pic is deceiving because the vinyl doesn't extend all the way to the edges of this sheet. However, there is probably 1/16" clearance.


This is what kills me, Van's says that the doubler should overlap the rear spar by 1" or so. Looks like 3/16" to me. From what I understand you don't want to follow what Van's tells you to do, because if you do make it overlap by 1", then you run into it interfering with the flaps somehow.

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Last Modified: October 5, 2024