Wings Chapters 2 & 3

Started on the wings, the first real big job. Located parts to frame clean and deburred all holes and edges. Painted mating services with "the black paint"

Manual says to rivet and bolt strut attachment SA083, have only clecoed this until bottom skin is in place so riveting near strut attachment will be easier. Riveting attachment needs to be completed prior to top skin being put in place.

Bottom skin clecoed in place, would have liked the cut outs where fuel tanks go to stay in place but they fell out when lifting the skins out of the box.

Bottom and top skin in place and riveted.

Need to find some more parts to complete, being left outer skin. Doesn't mention in the construction manual but is located in the spare parts catalogue.

Nose skin has some terrible stains, not sure where this came from or what caused it? Someone mentioned that maybe it was wet at some stage and the protective paper had some acid??? Not sure but will clean off with Scotch Brite

Now the fun starts, started to bend the nose skin, trying to make sure I use as many straps as needed and slowly tighten and not rushing the process.

Finalised the nose skin and could remove straps once rivets in. A few dimples when the nose skin meets the ribs, seems pretty common with most Savannah’s, saw a tip where another builder injected an epoxy between the skin and the rib preventing the dimple. Works a treat so most of the dimples are now gone.

I have not installed the wing door support yet as it will only need to be removed to instal fuel system later.

Have filled the wing tip with body filler to give smooth surface for later painting.

Fitting wing tip initially isn’t the easiest task, especially when the instructions relate to the previous type of wing tip. Problem there is no rib at the end, so the metal doesn’t hold shape. However, after speaking to someone, I made a temporary rib using the nose rib from the other wing as a template and it makes the job so much easier. Wing tip fits in place in 5 minutes. Most of the time spent trying to fit tip before template was used.

Now the wing tip is fitted, so easy once you know how, now to drill holes into fibreglass wing tip and rivet. Quite happy with end result.