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 alot.

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....