Algebra Build 6.5 - Joining the wings.

Well, I got so carried away with test-rigging the plane I forgot to tell you about joining the wings.

In actual fact, this turned out to be one of the easiest things.

Firstly, I tested my joining rig. This consisted of a block at the end of the wingtip to get the correct dihedral, and a lot of tape to hold the two parts of the wing in line. Having pre-sanded the ends of the wing panels to 4 degrees each, joining them at 8 degrees would give me a nice tignt join.

It really turned out to be quite simple. I taped across at right angles to the join on the underside of the wing, stretching the tape slightly to hold the two pieces together tightly. Then I mixed up about 4 inches of 5 minute epoxy (4 inches of glue and 4 inches of hardener). I squiggled that into the open joint using a coffee mixer from the machine at the garage, then blocked up the wingtip, using weights on the join to hold it square and flat.

If you didn't know, ordinary vinegar is a fantastic fluid for cleaning up epoxy! It has the added bonus of making your pride and joy smell like fish and chips...

Once joined, a tape is glued along the bottom using white wood glue

 

Once the white glue was dry, the excess tape was trimmed off and sanded to a nice edge.

That was it, the wings were joined!

Now for the covering...