I only worked had a couple of hours tonight, so I decided that I would start assembling the left aileron.

First thing I did tonight, was to break out my makeshift bending brake that you put together during the empennage stage.  I bent the skin to its final radius.  Pretty straight forward.  I am never really happy with how well the bending brake works.  My trailing edge was straight and looked the same size when compared with the full size figure on dwg 13a.

Here I started clecoing the ribs and spar in the aileron.  I wasn't thinking 10 minutes in front of where I was going here as I ended up removing the spar so that I could cleco in the leading edge skin too.

At least it is starting to look like another aircraft control surface.

See all those cleco's on the spar????  They were there 10 minutes and then I took them all back out again.

Disregard this step too.  In order to get the whole aileron assembly together, it is easier to cleco the nose rib to the leading edge skin when it is NOT attached to the aileron spar.

Okay, now that I have the mental picture of where I am going.  The first thing I should have done was to assemble the leading edge skin, nose rib and counterbalance weight.

Before clecoing the counterbalance weight in, I polished the external of the water pipe with some 320 grit wet/dry sandpaper and then ran it over the scotchbrite polishing wheel on the bending grinder.  This remove all burrs and rough surfaces.  I also used the deburring tool to soften the edges of the water pipe.

First I laid the counterbalance weight in the leading edge skin so that it was relatively even with the edges of the leading edge skin.  Then I clecoed the nose ribs to the leading edge skin which more or less held the counterbalance weight (pipe) enough to keep it from moving around a lot.

I then ensured that the counterbalance weight was flush with the edges of the skin.  (Not shown), but I used a cleco clamp on the other side of the leading edge skin to help hold the counterbalance pipe in position while I drilled the first hole.

Using a #40 drill bit and using the pre-punched holes in the leading edge skin, I worked my way down the counterbalance weight and match drilled the holes that will attach the counterbalance weight to the leading edge skin.

I ended up drilling one hole on each end of the counterbalance weight (pipe) to hold everything in place.

Just an inside shot of the counterbalance weight and the nose rib.

An aileron with some drag inducing cleco clamps.

Everything fit together like a champ.  I can't get over how accurate Van's pre-punches everything.

Once I had drilled all the holes in the counterbalance weight to skin to size #40, I went back and drilled everything out to its final size of #30.  #30 is needed to accept the CS4-4 blind rivets that will be used to secure the counterbalance weight to the aileron skin.

Short night without a whole lot of progress, but at least I am feeling like I am whittling away at it.  Its better than NO PROGRESS AT ALL....

What can I say here?  Drilling, Deburring, and Dimpling.....  What I did here was labeled the stiffeners 1 thru 16 and then match drilled them all.  I also labeled the aileron skin as to whether it is right, left, top, bottom, inboard, outboard, etc.  It is not obvious to the casual observer which is which.  Right and left is easy as they are labeled -L or -R.

So how I determined which end was up so to speak was used the aileron spar as it only lines up with the skin pre-punch holes one way.  On the spar, only one end has holes drilled for a nutplate.  Aaaha, I have my unique landmark.  After that, getting your bearings on this was pretty straight forward.

What do you do after drilling?  Well, the correct answer would be deburring.  Okay, done that, now it was on to dimpling.  My Harbor Freight $5 dead blow hammer is hanging in there, but as I went along, I started seeing chunks of orange material go flying.  One of these times I am going to swing that thing and all the steel shot is going to go everywhere.  Time for a road trip to the Omaha Harbor Freight me thinks....

One aileron dimpling done, one more to go...

The president of the Auburn Airport Authority stopped in where Tami works today and was asking her how the plane was coming.  Tami went into great detail on the nastyness offered by sealing fuel tanks and told him he was more than welcome to come and log some construction time.  Jay normally stops over on my Friday's off and checks up on my progress.  Okay Jay Hauserman, this invitation is for you (I know you check this site from time to time).

I will take any day of the week off work if you want to come help pound rivets or play with tank sealant.  Bring your flying partner Steve I will find a way to put you both to work.  HeHe....