When I first looked at the steps for the wings in the manual, I thought to myself - not too bad, "I ought to blast through most of the upper wing in a few days". I should know better!

The first step on the trailing edge sheeting is to true up the edges and then cut them to 1". Now I know some guys that might skip this step thinking - "Hey, SIG's a great vendor, their wood is going to be straight and true - no need for me to waste time getting this puppy true..." Wrong Col. Sanders!!

Take a look at pictures1 and 2. This is the finished "trued" piece of sheeting directly from the kit. I about fell over when I held this against the straightedge - it looked like the lips of a smiley face! It was bowed that bad. I had to take pictures once I got it true. Picture1 is a measurement taken from the center and Picture2 is taken from the edge.

Of course, the second piece was virtually true to start with ... go figure.

Now that the sheeting is trued and cut its a matter of "glue and go", right? Well not in my case...

Now, I am about to show my anal retentive side - I'm feeling a bit vulerunable here - but this gives you a peek into my psyche.

The picture in the manual shows someone using Thin CA to affix the bottom section of the TE to the underside of the ribs - of course there's nothing holding this to the ribs ... at least nothing in the picture. So I think to myself, "how are you going to hold that TE sheeting onto the underhang of the ribs while at the same time gluing?". "Not well", was my answer!

So I came up with a cheesy solution - but it worked, so I can use it 2 more times (left and right wings)!

I figured, why not brace the sheeting from underneath? So I grabbed some scrap 1/4" balsa and fabricated 10 braces that fit under the TE sheeting and keeps it flush under the ribs. Brilliant, says the Guiness guy!

It ended up working better than I hoped. Since I used Titebond on this I weighted down the structure and grabbed an Adult Beverage


Picture1 - Trued piece; measurement at center
Picture2 - Trued piece; measurement at end [X(]
Picture3 - Fixture used to true edges - thanks Caffeenman!
Picture4 - This is the brace I fabricated to keep the LE Sheeting flush under the Ribs
Picture5 - Here you can see the little braces ready to be puched into place under the glued sheeting
Picture6 - A closeup of the little brace at work