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Chapter4
Chapter5
Chapter6
Chapter7
Chapter8
Chapter9
Chapter10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25

This is the hotwire saw used to cut all the foam to shape. I'm borrowing it from JD at Infinity Aerospace. It has the belville washers on each end to pull the wire tighter when it gets hot and relaxes. I cut both sets of wing jigs with a DeWalt Jig saw with a high quality BOSH blade using shelving board from home depot. The blade is designed not to chip the material being cut. This was nice, because I used a sharpie marker to trace the shape to the wood, so as I cut the material in front of the mark wasn't flying away. You could also glue the paper down and cut the paper line with the same results.
If you don't use a good blade in your saw, because of the thickness of the material, it can result in and non-perpendicular cut in the wood. I STILL had some cuts non-perp. SO, I bought this $100.00 oscillating drum sander you see. It worked GREAT. What I did was after cutting with the jig saw, I would then tape the paper template flat on the workbench, lay the jig over the paper, and I could see where I needed to remove material to get to the black line. I marked those areas with a fat marker, and sanded them away with the drum sander. And the drum sander sands exactly perpendicular.

Here the template is taped down, and this jig has been compared to it, and drum sanded to perfection.

Both sets of jigs complete. These jigs will stand vertical a given distance from each other and the sections of foam will rest inside and the jigs. The jigs will position the foam exactly where it needs to be before fiberglassing. All formica templates complete-very smooth so the wire will have no chance of STOPPING on a snag in the middle of a hotwire cut! That sucks! Been there done that. The winglet templates are complete too because I'm going to do those at the same time as the wings since I will have to return JD's hotwire saw. Later note: I thought I would do both wings at the same time and that is why I made 2 sets of jigs. Turns out, I didn't have enough room in my shop unless I hauled my tub out. (too much work) But, using two sets of jigs is a bad idea anyway, because you would have a better chance of not having two exact wings, and as a result, may have to add washers at the wing attach points to compensate. It seems like alot of work wasted. It was a good bit of work, but if you compare it to the total build time required, it's about .001%. Not even noticeable.

Using strings, to get everything coincident.

I ripped some 2x4 lumber down a bit, and you can see the near jig is held against it with the red handled clamp. My table wasn't even close to level, (don't need to be) (just threw it together crooked as all hell) but by having a few inches of height on the 2x4, it gave me all the vertical adjustment I needed. I just got the two END jigs coincident with each other, and then ran the strings, then made the center jigs touch the strings, then held each jig in place temporarily with clamps, then drove several screws through the 2x4 into the jig.

On my jigs, the bottom fit very accurately. But the top was a different story. Being as ugly as it was, I just sawed the upper jig halves to create a space all around. (this didn't take mush sawing) Then, made sure the surfaces of the shear web area (trailing and leading edges) were spline sanded, and laid the LE on top of the TE. I decided there was enough surface area that they were resting at the correct position, relative to each other. But I took it one step further to make sure. Now listen up, this worked good.
I slid the inboard and center core inboard about 8 inches. ( to make room to attach the formica template) My cores do just slide while in the jigs. Then, I attached both formica templates to TE and LE cores with a buttload of nails to precisely locate the leading edges to the TE. I then installed the top half of the jigs. Then, cut a bunch of small wood blocks, mixed up some 5 min epoxy, and using some tape, (so I didn't have to stand there 5 minutes per block) I taped the epoxied block the the jig, pressed against the foam. I glued several per jig. You can see photos of this three pictures down. NOW MY FRIEND, the jigs are ACCURATE!

I added these wood strips in addition to the "links" to take out some of the flimsiness.

Getting ready to bond the pieces together

Email -- Jay Hegemann