I need to do a little priming soon to be ready to seal the tanks, but the temperature in the garage hasn't been all that conducive to it. It looks like we may get a 15 degree bump tomorrow, so maybe that'll be my window of opportunity for the week.
Today I fabricated a couple of parts that attach to the inboard tank rib. The first is a piece that inserts into the inside of the tank and helps to cover the notches in the rib flanges. This will get sealed to the rib and also seats against the skin and seals there.
The other piece to fabricate was the inboard attach angle that connects the tank to the fuselage. This was very thick aluminum angle, so took a lot of cutting, filing, sanding and work on the scotch brite wheel to get right.
After the basic shape was done, I drilled the holes that will connect the angle to the inboard tank rib.
The angle fits in the nose of the rib and gets match drilled.
Lastly, the inner trim piece gets match drilled using the new reference holes in the rib.
A couple of hours for two pieces! I thought I might do the second tank at the same time to speed things up, but realized that I wouldn't be able to get very far since I don't have the room to put the 2nd wing spar in a jig before the first one is done (to drill the tank and Z brackets to). I'll just have to try to remember all of the lessons I've learned on this side.
