| | | Here's some pics of a project we were required to build in the Airframe course.
I got it out of the garage, I haven't looked at it for years. Note the corrosion and cobwebs.
All the aluminum was flat stock to start with, and had to be bent on a bending block, or hand-formed.
To form the leading edge ribs, we had to scale the drawings, cut and shape a hardwood form with the proper radius on the edge, then clamp the aluminum to it and hammer the aluminum over the form with a rawhide mallet. The aluminum won't make that compound bend all at once without cracking, so we had to do it incrementally, and anneal it after each increment, to soften it up again. Then when we were done, we had to heat treat it again to restore its proper hardness.
One panel is dope & fabric, and you can see they made us cut it and repair it, and install an inspection port.
We had to cut a piece of the aluminum out and make a patch with flush rivets. The section with two sheets of aluminum has a honeycomb structure inside.
The little spoiler on the leading edge would help improve the wing's stall characteristics.
The kitten is a foster. He hadn't seen it before, so was very interested.
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