2.5 Hours -
I was thinking about the plane the other night, as I often do, and I realized that I had forgotten about filing down the lap joint at the forward intersection of the top two wing skins. Fortunately, I hadn’t started riveting the skins yet, so I removed the inboard skin from the top of the left wing and started sanding down the corner with a 2” Scotchbrite wheel on my die grinder. The point of this being to make the wing skins lay at the same height as the fuel tank skin where the wing skins overlap.
The area I sanded down included a triangular area on the inside of the skin where the skins overlap. The triangle was 3.5 inches on two of the sides, and I tried to use the Scotchbrite wheel in a way that would result in the area becoming progressively thinner near the corner of the skin. I did this on both of the top skins. I probably could have been more aggressive with this, but I would rather have the skins not be flush than to ruin one by being overly aggressive with the Scotchbrite.
I used a Scotchbrite wheel to file down the corners of the skin where they overlap.
Once this was done, I replaced the inboard skin and wing walk double on the wing. Then, I went to work doing the final prep on the top outboard wing skin. As usual, this meant removing strips of the blue plastic, deburring all of the holes, deburring the edges, dimpling all of the holes, scuffing the underside, and, finally, priming. The top skins are now ready to be riveted to the left wing.
The top inboard skin and wing walk doubler are ready to be riveted.
Yes, I’m still delaying fixing my right fuel tank leaks!
