Day 9 (Of building ...not counting from first day of building)
Well I'm back in the shop again. For those who have read the "What Can Be Done?" thread in the clubhouse, you know that I got a big lungfull of CA fumes while doing some sanding. I have spent the last few days coughing and hacking and in general with a lot of pain in my lungs and throat. (CA can be real b***ch) Anyway, I am feeling much better now and will have to watch myself closer. I am very careful when applying the stuff, this just caught me off guard cause I was sanding with a Dremel.

Ok..back to the build. In previous posts, I mentioned that the TE sheeting warped when I applied the second sheet of 1/16" balsa between each rib on the back side of the TE sheeting. I was doing this to increase the strength of the sheeting due to it becoming pretty thin during sanding the TE. Well all is fixed now. I used Elmers Wood filler (recommended by Minnflyer in another thread) and have sanded the warped parts back into shape. I would have included pics of the repair, but you can't see much, which is the point, right? So tonight I decided to start with the wing tip sheeting (boy you just can't get away from that sheeting stuff can you..) In my pictures you can see that one end of the Leading Edge (LE) was up and off of the rib and just hanging there without support. The picture of my hand and pencil show me tracing the outline of the new shape on 1/16" flat stock. After cutting out a new support, I epoxied (yes, epoxied not CA'd) the newly shaped rib support in place. This will provide the support needed on the end of the wing and my next step will be to but up the wing tip sheeting to the new rib material.

The other pictures are of my progress on the wingtips. I glued the sheeting along the wing tip supports provided in the kit, then I soaked the balsa with pure ammonia. Smelled like heck , but it really works well for bending the wood without splitting. After the wood softened enough, I pulled in place and clipped it with clothes pins. It did leave some small dents where they pressed into the wood, but I have had great success with using a covering iron and water to draw back out the surface. I will do this on during my finish sanding phase. Here are the pictures of my progress. I have both bottom wingtips in place and will continue with the top ones tomorrow. Would have done more, but I am still a little gunshy around the glues. A few days more and I will probably be gluing myself to the plane again.