November 17, 2003

Took me a couple of days to get moving on this. Basically, I've always gotten a bit nervous before starting a big project. Yes, yes, I know. Just think of it as a lot of little projects; and that's what I do. The difference this time is that unlike large software projects where I know what I'm doing inside-out, I'm a newbie on this stuff, and the thought of screwing up right out of the gate was causing me to delay. I finally ran out of excuses and bit the bullet...

As usual, the fear was worse than the deed. The bandsaw (I haven't used one of these suckers since 9th grade woodshop) worked perfectly. I left myself plenty of room to clean up the edge on the belt sander, and the VS Spar Caps came out just fine. Nervousness is done! Woot!

Here I have them clamped in place, getting ready to flip the spar over and match-drill from the other side. This is looking down from the top of the spar.

Web drilling is done!

Okay, this might have been the slow way to do it, but I wanted to make sure that the cap and the spar flange were tight, so I kept a clamp one hole to the side, and moved it after each hole. Overkill? Maybe, but at least I know the cap is tight to the spar flange. I figure I'll make enough mistakes no matter how careful I am, so no reason to create more problems than I need.

The flange is match-drilled to the cap.

Here's the spar with 1008 match-drilled on the front side, the hinges in place (see the cleco's at the top of the photo), etc. Only thing left to do is to countersink the holes as necessary on the brace. It's 10:30, time to head upstairs.