Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Wing Assembly Jig

You can , of course, assemble the wing on saw horses. However there are two major problems with the saw horse method: (1) a horizontal wing takes up a lot of floor space, 5X16=80 square feet.  Plus room to walk around all sides, doesn't leave much room in a small shop for other important things like the fuselage and tools. And (2) you can't reach both sides of the wing unless you're willing to turn it over very often.

I use saw horses to begin the assembly:  attach wing spars to the compression struts, thread in the drag wires and trammel the assembly. I modify the saw horses by adding 6 inch "lifts" to them to bring their tops up to a more comfortable, work bench like, height.  Photo 1.

But for the remainder of the assembly, nose ribs, trailing ribs, leading edge, etc., it's much easier to use a vertical jig.  I can get at all sides of the wing easily, and the whole thing takes up less than 20 square feet.  I use a couple C clamps to secure the wing to the vertical jig.  Photo 2.

I made my jig out of 2X4's bolted to the rafters and standing on the cement floor.  Another 4 foot long 2X4 is bolted to the upright member and to the wall of the shop.  This gives me a 4 foot space to work behind the wing and makes the jig nicely rigid.  Photo 3 is a drawing of the jig.

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