I am in the process of bonding the bushes into the CM and the guide
sockets. The pre-made spar bushes align perfectly with each other, and
I can drop the 1/2" bolts in with no effort. However, the mating blank
holes in the CM are a tad too far apart, by about 1mm. The bush
doesn't have much wiggle room in the hole. Nevertheless, with a lot of
force and torque I am able to drive the bolt in. Removing the bolt is
also a big struggle. This doesn't seem right.
My thought was that the holes were either made with a small error, or,
possibly the cockpit module could have expanded or twisted with time.
I was going to lightly grind the inside of the hole to expand it and
then bond the bush with flox. My question is, which bush? We are only
talking about 1mm, so it may not matter but I didn't want to run in to
problems later due to this.
Another related concern is, given that the CM has some flexibility at
this stage, even if I make the bushes align perfectly now, I am
concerned if they may not align later. So one thought I had was to
attach a long thick steel plate to the bushes (like a dummy spar) and
leave it in there until after the cockpit module is bonded. Has anyone
tried something like this, or is this an overkill?
BTW, I am in awe of those who did this step by supporting the wings on
wooden blocks and beer crates. It took me a greater part of a week to
tweak the height and angles and lots of shimming to get the wings line
up. This was not trivial. I have some photos on my website.
|