Initial Prep (Debur, Trim, Drill, and Cut) 7/4/22 – 1.1h 7/5/22 – 2.2h 7/6/22 – 2.6h 7/7/22 – 1.7h 7/9/22 – 2.3h 7/10/22 – 0.8h 7/14/22 – 2.9h 7/15/22 – 1.9h The initial mock-up is always a fun step in the build process since you quickly go from a pile of parts on the bench to a recognizable aircraft structure. I started by inserting the left leading edge skin into the cradles attached to saw-horses, and then cleco'd the leading edge ribs to the skin. It is clear at this point that setting the forward-most rivets will be very awkward, but the rest of the holes appear to have good access for riveting. It is also worth noting that aligning the ribs with the correct holes is tricky. I had to start clecoing from the forward-most hole aft to ensure I had the rib in the correct position. I recognized a minor error with the J-Channel I cut in the previous step. It turns out I drilled the starter hole at the wrong end of the J-Channel. Fortunately, I was careful to make a mirror image of the J-Channel for the right leading edge, so correcting the mistake was simply crossing out the “R” in the part label and renaming it “L”. The correctly labeled J-Channel fits perfectly, so crisis averted! Most of the deburring is similar to previous steps in the build. Of note, the landing light cutouts are very rough around the corners. That means there is some additional filing required to smooth those corners before getting to the final deburring to finish preparing the part. [Hole and Edge Deburring Tools, #40 Drill, #10 Drill, Small Files, Standard Files] Final Prep (Dimple, Countersink, and Shape) 7/9/22 – 1.1h 7/11/22 – 1.1h 7/12/22 – 0.6h 7/13/22 – 1.3h 7/15/22 – 0.8h 7/17/22 – 1.4h The J-Channel for the leading edge is prepared the same way the wing J-Channels were prepared. I cleco'd the J-Channel in place at the starter hole, and clamped the other end of the J-Channel in place using the centerline to align the J-Channel to the leading edge skin. I then matched-drilled the J-Channel to the skin, clecoing every hole as I went. While the drill was out, I also match drilled the aft-most holes in the skin to the ribs. The final step for the left skin was to cut out the stall warning slot using the two pre-drilled holes in the leading edge, final drilled to #10 size, as end guides for the slot. I drilled four #40 holes between the end holes to remove as much material as I could, and then cleaned up the slot with a small hobby file. Prior to dimpling, I put a very slight break on the top and bottom edges of the leading edge skin to help it rivet tightly to the wing spar. That was not specified in the plans, but seemed like a reasonable thing to do since that is how the top skins were prepared. Before dimpling, it is important to note there are a few holes in the leading edge skin that do not get dimpled at this time. Specifically, do not dimple the most outboard row of holes used to attach the wing tip, the hole for the tie-down, and the crew holes for the landing light lenses. Those all get taken care of in later steps. I did as much dimpling as I could with the pneumatic squeezer before switching to the C-Frame to finish dimpling the leading edge skins. I used the reduced diameter 3/32 dimple die on the new far-aft holes in the rib flanges and for the nut plate dimples on the access panel doubler. The #6 screw hole dimples in the doubler are on the very inside edge of the part, which was a little surprising to me. I finished dimpling with the standard size 3/32 dimple die. [Edge Forming Tool (Vise Grip Style), Pneumatic Squeezer with 3/32 Reduced Diameter and Standard Dimple Dies, 22” C-Frame with 3/32 Standard Dimple Die, Hole and Edge Deburring Tools, Small Files]