The replacement angle for the HS-1008 spar attach brackets came in. I got to re-fabricating those and they came out well this time.

Then cleco'd the front spar doubler to the spar and clamped the attach brackets to an angle to keep them square, then match drilled them to the doubler no problem. Then cleco'd the spar doubler to the spar and that is where my screw up began.

Actually my screw up started when I was drilling the spar caps and labeled them top and bottom. My cursory review of the spar itself didn't seem to have a top or bottom. Looked symmetrical like the rear spar so I arbitrarily label one side as up. I missed that the spar is predrilled for the spar attach bracket.

When I then cleco'd the doubler, which obviously has a top and bottom, not all of the holes were there. At this point the doubler is covering up the spar so I can't see the obvious mistake and that there are holes in the spar that should align. Oh well, I proceeded to drill the apparently missing holes through both the spar and the spar caps. Only once I was completely done and removed the clecos that I saw my problem. Not only did I put a lot of unnecessary holes in the spar, the new holes are way too close to several of the existing holes. I'm pretty sure it's ruined.

I feel so stupid. I wasn't rushing, I was taking my time, double checking the plans at every step. I even paused when it looked like a couple of holes in the spar didn't perfectly align with the doubler, but I wrote it off as just CNC misalignment - I should have known better. Many opportunities to catch the error, I just didn't. Then even when I saw that the holes were misaligned, I thought this has to be a problem with Van's. No. I need to trust that Van's is correct and stop until I figure it out.

I'll order a new forward spar and caps and start over. It sucks, I had put a lot of work into those spar caps. The parts are probably not that expensive, but shipping an 11' long spar is not going to be cheap.

3/29 Update - talked to Van's, they're sending me a new spar because of the corrosion issue. I get a mulligan on this one.

Purchases: Van's replacement spar caps, proseal