I’ve finally deburred all the wing/tank ribs. I have spent the past few days straightening and fluting them now. The flanges are not quite at 90 degrees to the web, so you have to use a hand seamer to bend the flanges a bit so they’re perpendicular to the web.

Also, each rib comes from the factory with severe warping, because of how it is made. Here’s a couple of pictures of a rib after having its flanges bent to 90 degrees, but before fluting…

You can see how it’s bowed out.

As the rib is fluted, it gets ‘pulled in’ and straightened out. The picture on the left below shows the fluting pliers squeezing the flange, and the picture on the left shows the end result..nice and flat on the table.

I’ve gotta do this all of the ribs, so I’m going to be at it for a while….I’m averaging about three ribs per day. Talk about mind-numbing work…
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