Hi Guys. Thanks once again for your encouraging comments. I appear to be working on a boring part of the build at the moment but am gradually making progress that I'd like to bring up to date. What I've been working on since my last post is the skinning of the wingtips – port and starboard.
First, a reminder that the wingtips supplied were solid wood, with no rib structure.
Here are the instructions for riveting the wing tips. These, I believe, are incorrect.
I decided to base the riveting on the rib structure, as shown in the two references below. These are from the Haynes Lancaster Owner's Guide and one of them is an official RAF diagram from the same source.
First the shapes of the wingtips had to be cut from the metal sheet supplied (bottom). Then, they were marked and riveted which begins to shape them to the wing contour (top).
The trickiest bit was shaping about 3mm on the front to match the tapering on the leading edge. This was achieved by many fittings and shaping the edge with a pliers and a light hammer.
The shapes were initially cut using the cardboard templates supplied. However, careful measuring and fitting to the wooden base is essential, and trimming and fitting was required to match to the edge of the aileron, the position of the navigation lights and the curve around the leading edge. I found that I may have over-sanded the trailing edge of the wooden wingtip. Now the rear of the metal panels extend beyond it - but crimp to a nice thin trailing edge.
Having done all the measuring and adjusting, the wingtips, one panel at a time, were contact glued into place, clamped and left overnight to cure. The small steel rules put pressure on the inner panel edge to give good contact across the width of the wooden wing.
So finally, this part of the port and starboard wings skinning is complete. Here are the wings as they stand. The port wing is now fully skinned. The starboard wing requires the top and leading edge to be skinned, which I hope to get to shortly.
As you can see, there will be filling and sanding required before these wings can be attached to the inner wings. On that, I would strongly recommend to Tim and Pete that they attach as little as possible to the wings before finishing skinning. The instructions would have the engines and parts of the cowlings attached by now. I found that, with the amount of manipulation required, I disturbed the dropped flaps and will have to re-secure them. God knows what else I'd have knocked off if the engines had been in situ!
The instructions also call for the navigation lights to be added now.
I'd prefer to leave them at least until the wings are painted. They're less likely to be damaged then. Also, I'm not sure if the instructions are correct here either. All my research indicates that they should be clear lenses with coloured bulbs but I could be mistaken. I'd be grateful if someone could confirm this.
Finally, finally, another alert for Tim and Pete. In issue 112, the opening instruction is to remove the skin from the port wing inner trailing edge and turn it 180 degrees because the riveting doesn't match the riveting on the main wing. This would initially have been skinned very early on in the build. I had spotted this before I skinned it and wasn't caught out by it. I think that I may have flagged it at the time. If it's not too late for you guys, check out issue 112 before you skin that piece.
Now it's back to the workhouse (sorry, work bench) for me.
Sláinte,
Gerry