OH SHIT! I DID IT WRONG!

[EDMO 1078]

When I was an apprentice Toolmaker over 50 years ago I naturally made some mistakes.  My learned old Journeyman calmly told me, "Everyone makes mistakes.  A good Toolmaker is one who can fix his F...-ups before the boss finds out."   Well, now I have made another one, and fortunately, I am the boss on this job, but will tell about it so that maybe someone else wont panic if they do the same.

After making a right-hand Flap and Aileron, I started building the left-hand parts.  Somehow, after marking both the leading edge tube and the trailing edge, I must have flipped them over opposite of what they should be.  I proceded to glue all the ribs to them and then reinserted the pivot tube and flap hanger with bearings and glued the ribs to the pivot tube except for the end braces.  That was about 2 weeks ago, and I was happy with my "progress".  Storms came, temperature dropped and furnace quit in shop, so I waited until the temperatures got warm enough to glue without heat in the shop.

To my surprise, when I started to work on the flap today, I discovered that my flap hinge was about a foot away from the measurement I had marked on my tape measure!  After some head scratching I figured out how I had screwed up - I made another Right-Hand Flap!  I quickly thought about the builder's manuals telling to "Make both a right and a left wing"!  Then I did some more thinking to figure out how to resolve the problem.   Since I have no spare ribs, my only option is to cut one rib in half, melt the glue in 3 places on it with a heat gun, remove it, and scrape and sand the glue off of the pivot tube in order to slide the bearings and hanger down to where it should be, and reglue the rib back together where it should be on the other side of the hanger.

I have removed damaged ribs from spars before, but that was when I didn't care how badly I damaged them.  This time is a little different, as I need to save the rib and not damage the pivot tube.  So here I go, carefully cutting the rib in half, heating and scraping the glue off of the pivot tube, and trying to make everything look like it was made correctly.   Bottom line of a long story about much of nothing:  Don't Panic - If you cant figure out how to fix your mistakes, there are lots of us on here who have made mistakes too, and maybe our experiences will enable us to help you figure a way to make everything turn out right.  It's just one more step up the learning curve.

Cheers,  EDMO

Edited 30 May 2017 by EDMO

[Fly-n-Low 181]

I always said, "If you don't screw up every once and a while, you aren't doing anything! "