The weight of the wing causes the middle to sag a bit, so I put a support near the middle of the rib.  This is basically just a piece of steel tubing and some allthread with a washer and nut.  I put a couple of plastic feet on each end to prevent scratching the spar and to prevent it from slipping on the floor.

I stretched a piece of fishing line across the lower set of holes in the spar and adjusted the support until the fishing line ran through the center of all of them.

The wing walk doublers have to be cut from a larger piece of aluminum sheet.

Then positioned under the top wing skin for match drilling.

Here are both doublers match drilled to the top skins.

It’s late, but I just had to see what these looked like clecoed to the skeletons.  I’m really glad I ordered some extra 3/32″ clecoes and I’m really glad I have the pneumatic cleco tool.  I know my hands would be killing me if I had to do this with regular cleco pliers.

Here is a closeup of the overlap between the inboard and outboard top skins.  Before riveting these on for good, I’ll create a slight bevel on these skins to reduce the bulge.

I squeezed all of the rivets attaching the ribs to the rear spars tonight.  Pay careful attention to the rivet callouts because there are a number of holes that must be skipped and there are four different lengths of AN470 rivets used.  Here are a couple of holes that must be skipped where the flap brace rivets to the rear spar.

The outboard ribs attach to the rear spar with AN426 (flush) rivets since the outboard aileron brackets sits on top of this spot and rivets through the 5 open holes just inboard of these rivets.

The last few days have been spent deburring and prepping all of the ribs for priming.  Here are all of the ribs drying after being etched.

And here is a shot of one set of ribs drying after being primed.

I protected the spar bars with some blue tape.  I really should stop using this stuff.  It comes off without leaving any residue on every surface except anodized aluminum.  I had to use some solvent to get all the gunk off the spar after riveting.

We didn’t get any pictures during the process, but my buddy Andre stopped by today and we shot and bucked all of the rivets that attach the ribs to the main spars.  We used a straight set and simply flexed the ribs out of the way while shooting.  130 rivets and not a single smiley or bad shop head.  Here, I’m clecoing the rear spar in place so we can hang up the wings.

Here’s a good shot of the whole wing.  The four closely spaced ribs at the bottom are for the wing walk.  There will be a double thick layer of skin over these four ribs to handle the load of people walking here.

Here are the wings permanently mounted in the cradle.  I still need to level and straighten them, but that will have to wait until another day.  My wife’s heading to Hawaii in a couple of days with a friend and I want to spend some quality time with her before she leaves.

I also attached and match drilled the holes that are used to attach the leading edge ribs to the spar.

I clecoed the wing structure together and temporarily hung it on the wing stand for drilling.

The wing stand uses 1″x1″x1/8″ steel (with some aluminum flashing tape to keep from scratching the spars).

Here is the outboard end with a scrap of aluminum angle bolted to the last rib as a mounting point.

I didn’t get any shots of it, but I match drilled all of the holes that connect the ribs to the front and rear spars.

I finished deburring the ribs tonight and then drilled holes for the wing conduit.  I made a simple paper template with marks to align with a couple of the bends and the flange of the rib and then center punched the spot.

I then drilled these out to #12.

And finally to 3/4″.  A number of builders drill the intermediate holes to 13/16″, but the conduit can be worked through 3/4″ with a little persistence.  As you can see from this wider shot, I’m putting the conduit where Van’s recommends (in the lower 1/3″ of the rib between the lightening hole and the reinforcement.

I finally clecoed the left wing together.  As other builders have said, it feels so good to finally see some structure go together after many many hours of fluting and deburring the wing ribs.

The obligatory shot through the lightening holes for posterity.

I also took a shot through the conduit holes so you can see how well these align even with just a simple paper template for positioning.  I’ve seen a number of builders spend a great deal of time building a template that aligns with the tooling holes in the ribs to ensure precise placement of the conduit holes, but this is rather pointless as the conduit is very flexible and even a simple method like this basically produces nearly perfectly aligned holes.

I haven’t posted many pictures lately because there is really not much to show for the work over the last few days.  I finally finished fluting the wing ribs tonight.  This is really hard on your hands, so you can’t work for long stretches.  Anyway, it’s done now.  All I have to do is debur the edges and lightening holes and I can get the wing structure up on the wing stands.

I’m in the middle of prepping the wing ribs.  There are 54 ribs total, and each one has to have the flanges bent to 90º and fluted between each hole to let them lay flat.  I still need to debur the lightning holes and edges before they can be attached to the spars.  This is a really time-consuming process, and I’m not even halfway through the process yet.

Here are some of the main ribs and prepping the flanges.  You can see how straight they are compared with the picture above.

Here is a close-up of the flutes that are added between each hole.  Basically, the edge of the flange is longer than the portion of the flange next to the web when the flange is curved.  This causes the rib to bow away from the flange.  By fluting the flanges, you effectively shorten the edge to be the same length as the flange along the web allowing the rib to lay flat.  This is definitely something you just have to get a feel for.  I’m getting faster, but it still takes 5-10 minutes per rib.

I clecoed all of the reinforcing plates and doubler plates onto the spar and match drilled them to the spar.

Here are the center reinforcement plates match drilled.  I hadn’t noticed the missing hole when I took this shot (can you spot it).

The reinforcing plates have to have an odd shaped hole for the aileron pushrod to go through.  This hole is already punched in the spar but must be cut in the reinforcing plate.  I used a unibit to rough cut close to the line and then files and sanded until they matched.

Afterward, I prepped and primed the reinforcing plates and doublers and riveted them to the spars.  Look carefully at the rivet callouts.  There are many rivets that are skipped and several different rivet lengths.

Here is the center reinforcing plate.  All of the missing rivets will be installed later in conjunction with other components.

I began working on the rear spar.  I started by trimming the inboard ends of rear spar reinforcing fork and doubler plates.  I don’t have a picture of it, but there is a bit of metal that has to be removed when building the RV-7/RV-7A.

Here are the rear spars.  I’ve just clecoed the center reinforcing plate on the upper one.

My brother is in town and helped me erect the wing jig.  I’m going to build both wings at the same time when possible, so I’ve erected two pairs of 4x4s about 2 feet apart.