Okay, now it's been nearly two months since I updated, and nearly that long since I did anything. I've been helping rebuild my son's new house since mid-March, so the RV-8 has had to have been set aside for the time being. Between my job and our own house and other time demands, my spare time has been spent in Elverta, California. However, I have had a bit of time here and there, but haven't posted anything here due to time constraints.

Basically, I finished riveting together the ribs and spars for the main structure for both wings and gotten that into my wing stands to await further work. Here are views of the wing stand being finished up. In mid-March my A&P buddy Greg was able to cut and drill some angle iron to finish out the wing stand. The original material I thought would work was too flimsy, thus the changeout.

And the completed stand ready for the wings.

Back to the riveting, setting the rivets to hold the ribs to the two spars was straightforward with a few stunning exceptions.

A bit closer...

And a view of the front of the spar near the wing tie down structure.

And here is the right wing coming together with the rear spar awaiting rivets.

Here the rivets are almost done. It pays to pay attention to the plans here, as there are several rivets that are not driven in this process. They await later structure.

Because if you don't pay attention and you have to drill a rivet out, this is what it looks like for these rivets, at least for me. Ugly. You can't easily get at the manufacturer's head of the rivet for drilling so you have to come in from the shop head side. I salvaged this hole post-rivet and it turned out okay but right here it looks downright, yep, ugly.

I knew a long break in my work was coming so I wanted to get the wings into the stand before that happened, and organize a few things and clean the shop, er, garage up a bit. Here are the wings in the completed stand.

It seems to me a lot of guys really get carried away with making sure everything is perfectly rigid and perfectly straight. To me, though, the point is to straighten the wing so the skin pre-drilled holes align with the spar pre-drilled holes. That is, after wall, what the plans say. So, this taut string makes sure things are straight.

And this is my leveling gizmo...some threaded rods, a few nuts and washers, and a two-by-four. I want to be able to move this stand around, so this makes it portable to me. Once the skin is on and match drilled it becomes less important to have this perfectly straight, at least until you are ready to rivet.

So, here is where I am right now as I get ready to slowly get back into putting this wing together. It's been a bit frustrating not being able to work on the airplane, but there is a time for everything. Now I think it's about time for the wings again.