Holy snappin' cold batman!

January is definitely here!  -32C today (that's about -25F for you imperialists) in the sun, without the wind.  Brrrrr..... good day to be in the shop with the woodstove!

I thought we'd be on the road this weekend with the family, picking up supplies at Aircraft Spruce, but a major winter storm threatened to clobber southern Ontario and delivered over 40 centimetres of snow, right where we were headed.  Glad we stayed home - we'll head south next weekend.

While I'm working on the 701 wing repair and making parts for my 750 STOL,  Ron continues work on his Aeronca Scout.  I hope to learn his methods for welding steel tube, he is a master craftsman.  The rear fuse frame has been painted and the new wooden stringers are just about to be installed.  Looking real good!

​Got the trailing edge complete on the 701 wing.  The plans call for squeeze rivets here - small ones!

​With the trailing edge aligned, finger clamps are used to maintain the edges of the top and bottom skins.  Spring loaded centre punch marking the location and spacing of the rivets, holes drilled and clecoed

Trailing edges now complete

With the wing now flipped upright, we need to strip off the last of the oh-so-pretty paint.  The stripped works real well on the white, but the red primer underneath is painfully difficult to remove.

After 4 hours of applying stripper, scraping and scrubbing, the wing is now clean enough for priming once it is ready.  I was so fed up I didn't take a picture.  What a pain.

So far I've got 17 "standard L" blanks cut, so I used some time to day to bend them.

I made two test bends and used these as measurement jigs by taping them to the ends of the blanks.  This provides the correct inserted depth in the bending brake.

Half an hour later, I had them all done and I'm happy how they turned out.  They still need to be deburred, but that will be easier now that they won't flex all over the place.  These are used all over the contstruction of my 750, so I'll score this under "other".

Spent the balance of the afternoon measuring and planning the installation of the nose skins for the wing.  With the extension, we'll need to use two separate skins, one inboard and one outboard with the joint offset from the spar extension joint.

This will take some planning and some thought which I've started on.  The end of this repair/extension is tantalizingly close.

Next weekend we're headed south to pick up some materials and parts.

Thanks for reading, more to come soon :)