Carlson Skunk Works

This weekend was busy, but left some time to work on Sawdust. I started by finishing up the details on the wings, then marked where the jury struts will mount to the struts. Finally, I put together the tool cart that I had purchased at Harbor Freight last December.

My neighbor, Carson, gave me a hand with pulling the wings and organizing the hanger for covering the wings. So at this point I am working on covering the wings.

The wings are off. The right wing is on wing stands at the back of the hanger. The left wing in on the wing stands to the left of fuselage in the picture. The red tool cart is sitting by the fuselage and is loaded with struts, tools and supplies.

I borrowed the wing stands from my friend, Fred. They have been used to hold the wings from several planes in the past, including the wings for a primary glider that was built by our EAA chapter before I moved to Kearney. They are kind of like the EAA wing rack, but they are designed to hold only one wing per set. This also provides a platform for rib stitching when I get to that point.

We moved the left wing to a workbench that I brought out to the hanger. This will give me a good platform for doing the covering.

The cable for the wing tip strobes is run through the ribs and is secured to each rib with a zip tie. Any place where the internal bracing straps came close to a rib structure I covered the rib structure with plastic tubing. The tubing is intended as a wire organization tool and was purchased in the aircraft materials area of my local Mendards.

The dust and dirt that has accumulated on the wing surface was wiped off. Any sharp edges and uneven areas were smoothed with a fine rasp. Anti chafe tape is being applied at any area where the fabric might wear against an edge.

The plastic tubing from the pitot and static tubes is run along the strobe cable to the wing root. Each tube is secured to the rib structure separately from the other using zip ties. The aileron control cable is secured to each of the compression ribs with zip ties.

The next things to do are to flip the wing over and apply the anti chafe tape to the top of the ribs and install the inter-rib bracing tape. I will also apply more anti chafe tape to any sharp edges. Then covering can begin. My biggest issue now is to figure out how to apply the fabric around the pitot static tubes.

I decided to turn the fuselage around, so it is now facing into the hanger. This gives more room to work on the wings.