August 20, 21, 23 – 2020
Disaster struck the garage today. While rolling the wing out of the garage one slipped off the stand and hit the ground hard. You can use a hardware store bolt through the center mounts and they’ll act as a retainer to stop this from happening. Turns out we forgot to put them back in the last time we put the wing on the stand. When the stand hit a crack in the concrete, it stopped but the wing kept moving.
I called it quits for the day and drank a lot of beer. Needed to settle my nerves before I was able to do anything about it. It dropped right on the inboard most rib in a horrible spot. We had an A&P come and take a look at it, and on his suggestion, we attempted to knock the dent back out. I removed the fuel tank access plate and made some wooden dowels up that closely matched the front shape of the wing. Because of the angle, I had no way to get any power behind it so it didn’t have the ability to get the dent to move.
I ended up making some dowels that closely resembled female bedroom toys and mounted them to the angry end of the rivet gun. This allowed me to hit the dent from the inside and knock most of it back out. Because it was mounted so close to the rib though, some of the dent was behind proseal and wouldn’t budge. I did the best I could but this wing will definitely need some bondo or micro to smooth out before paint.
-Paul
(Total Build Time: 557.6)