The good thing about a hobby is you don't have to do things in any precise order... Unless the model itself requires it. So, as the weather improved, instead of covering, I headed off in a different and likely better direction. Wing spars! So, wings went back on and I dove in.

The Dubro straps I bought were pretty tight getting a hole big enough for a 8-32 machine screw, but it worked. The prepunched holes were a bit off center, so I started with a needle file and enlarged while moving them to center. Then drilled from there. I have enough metal on both sides now. It would have been close if I hadn't done this centering. I used smaller machine screws to fasten them to the struts.

My handy dandy Dremel tool! That small drum sander... I let the sanding drum extend past the end of the mandrel a bit. I then used is sort of like a router, lining up the end of the drum with the bottom of the fuse plywood and sanded inward to create the area for mounting the struts to the fuse. This turned out to be a jewel of a way to do this. Looks 50 times better than the the hacked method pictured in the manual.

After sanding out those slots, I drilled for and inserted my brass 8-32 inserts through the fuse ply and into the 1/4" ply I used for my LG plate. I feel like I have a really rugged set of connection point and that the straps bolted to the struts will combine to be a very strong set of working struts.

I managed to pull off a really nice job of joining the two struts together. It is done much like outlined in the manual. A really good technique for the final fit is to hold them slightly apart and put a piece of sandpaper in the joint. Then you work the sandpaper, one side presses the sandpaper against any high areas on the other side of the joint. I'm pretty proud of those joints. I then epoxied them together while they were all fastened to the model. I laid paper towels under the glue area on the wings just in case of a drip and one did catch a drip! Next will be removing the struts, doing a bit of touch up sanding in the epoxied area and then I do plan to cover this area with fiberglass. That should make them as strong as the mounting points.

My windshield is done... my cowling just needs a bit more sanding and the carb cutout. I likely will need to do just a bit more sanding around the nose of the fuse to help the cowling fit more closely. And I need to glass the inside of the cowling seams.

Wow!!! My list is getting really short! Looking at it all again, I think I could go ahead and paint the inside of the cockpit any time now, do a bit of final sanding on the fuse and start the complete covering work.

Yeah, yeah, yeah... where's the photos.... Well, it was this then that and suddenly the model was upside down on my stands and then suddenly the struts were happening and there was just never a really good time to drag the whole thing outside. But look at it this way... I'll have photos with struts now.