Total build time: 230 hours.
After a break from building for the holidays, I’m back at it. From having reached the decision point of either moving on to the forward fuselage or the wings, I chose the wings. The main reason is that once the forward fuselage is finished and attached to the aft fuselage, my free/open work space shrinks rather dramatically due to having to store such a large and unwieldy structure. The wings however take a lot of room to build, but once complete they can be removed and easily stored anywhere.
Before the shape of the wings themselves are built, the main substructures must be built, and the primary structure to any aircraft wing begins with the wing spar. It’s basically a very strong and lightweight I-beam, and as I learned it’s more like building a bridge than an airplane part.
There are a lot of angle components that I needed to fabricate to add strength to the spars.
All of those parts I had to make and finish using stock aluminum bar and angle extrusion. For the final piece (two of them actually) I took photos of the process:
Step #1: measure and cut a length of angle:
Step #2: measure and mark the shapes that need to be cut into the angle:
Step #3: “radius” any interior corners to relieve stresses, then cut the angles.
Step #4: Deburr rough edges and remove any excess material to fit the required shape and size. Make it look pretty!
There ends up being 2 of every part, one each for the left and right wing spars.