Making the flap brackets   May 26th, 2009

So the flap rear spar and the inboard rib are not at 90 degrees to each other. In fact, they are at something like 96.5 degrees. This means the flat bracket you get as part of the kit has to have a 6.5 degree bend. How do you do this you ask? Well you whack the heck out of it with a hammer!
I’m not kidding either. I put it in the vice between two blocks of wood, and then went at it with the hammer. This is 1/8″ aluminum, and there is not a lot of leverage, so I had to hit it pretty hard for it to move.
How do you know when to stop hitting it? You take it off the vice, test-fit it on the spar with the other bracket, and then go hit it some more. When the two brackets, the spar, and the rib all fit really nicely, you quit hitting it!
This is what a 6.3 degree bend looks like:
This is the other bracket. This one does not come pre-cut. You have to make it from a piece of aluminum angle, and drill it according to the plan dimensions.

The piece on the top is what the bottom one looked like before cutting, drilling and sanding.
The next two pictures show the brackets in place next to the spar and rib. Note that the first picture shows the square bracket before drilling. Because three of the holes will go through the bracket, the spar, and the rib, this one has to get matched drilled to the spar and the rib.
So, I first clamped everything in place, and then used a long 12″ drill to drill from the rib side through the pre-punched holes in the spar and into the bracket. Not hard as long as you have this handy 12″ drill bit.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 at 2:12 am and is filed under Flaps, Wings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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