Back at the outboard seat ribs. It feels strange to flute ribs to make them curved instead of straighten them. Now that I had the approach figured out after thinking through it last night it actually went fairly quick though. I got both the right and left ribs clamped in place and match drilled them through the skins.
After the outboard seat ribs were done, I moved on to the outboard baggage ribs. These are a little different because they lay with the web flat against the skin as opposed to the flange. The first one gave me way more trouble than I care to admit. The instructions for these are non-existent, and unfortunately, the plans are also very little help. All the plans say to to do is line the edge of the rib up with the edge of the skin. The main issue was the fact that the angle of the rib didn't actually match the angle of the skin. As soon as I'd line up the front, the back edge was 1/8" away from the edge of the skin. It took me an hour of looking at various plan views and pictures online and inching things back and forth before I figured out that the aft portion of the rib doesn't actually have to line up with the skin. The front portion does because the side skin in this area is actually riveted to the flange itself. The aft portion of the side skin just curves around the flange and is riveted underneath as opposed to the flange, so it doesn't matter if the flange matches up exactly. Why they couldn't just say that in the instructions and save people hours of head scratching is beyond me.
With that figured out, I clamped the left rib in place and match drilled the web to the skin.
Each end of the rib needs an attach strap to bridge the gap between the end of the rib and the last skin hole (I still don't see why Van's doesn't just modify the shape of the rib). I found a scrap piece of .032" sheet and cut out the straps.
The aft attach strap is supposed to be like the top one in the picture. But since the aft portion of the rib doesn't line up with the skin, I had to remake them to create more meat at the end. Otherwise the holes in the skin were way too close to the edges of the strap. I made a jog in the strap so the end could stick out beyond the edge of the rib flange and capture more of the skin. Hard to explain, but it worked.
The next big question mark had to do with the portion of the rib flanges that have to be cut out for the step pipe to clear. Again, the instructions provide no guidance, and the plans don't show any actual measurements. I took that to mean that the actual size of the cutout doesn't make any structural difference (that was the consensus on most of the other build blogs I looked at as well). I eyeballed the arc that needed to be cut out and used a cutoff wheel to do it.
I thought holding the step in place would help me figure out if the cutout was good enough, but it looks like the portion of the tube that goes inside will have to be cut to length at some point, so even that wasn't a perfect measure. Oh well, I think it's good enough. Worse case scenario, I can modify it down the road when the step is actually attached.
After the left side was finished, the right side took a fraction of the time. Like 15 minutes for the right side vs hours for the left. I guess that means I can be taught, right?
