Electric Edge 540 build log #8

Time to birth a wing! Having cut literally hundreds of F2D leading edges and lots of 1/2a wings I thought I would just bang out a couple quick wings and move on… Na let’s make a day of it! 

I marked a large foam block for 4 wing panels and set up my very highly engineered jig for cutting the blocks. 

Hooked up the transformer to the bow and ………… nothing. I guess my transformer gave out while sitting on the shelf waiting for use? So dug out the older one and got to making foam fumes. 

Next I marked the center line to mount the templates with my handy dandy center of the foam marker tool and installed templates with torturous looking nails.

Panels cut, templates mounted, - now for the airfoils - Boing! After about ¾ of the first airfoil cut the wire broke and I managed to test the heat with a couple of fingers as the wire squirmed around making intermittent contact. OK no big deal just make another wire and get back to work, after running 3 minutes of cold water on the fingers just for fun.

 Wire broke about riiiight ----here!

Found these cool clamps in the “clamp drawer” from 1/2a making days. Pat Willcox turned me on to these in early 2000. With these clamps and some white Gorilla Glue wing is joined in 20 minutes.

On all the Warbirds I built in 2010 I used 1/2"x1/8" spruce spars. 

Being that we are in 2018 I thought I would go a little more modern and use .063 fiberglass rods for spars instead. They are less than half the weight and should “flex” when hit from the top and not break like wood spars.  Should.  

I set up the Dremel with a .054 bit because I do not have a .063 bit... and cut a very straight slot thanks to the aluminum guide. 

And just like that the day is shot… Tomorrow I will get the wing and spars trimmed up and weighed. Then likely cut some lightening holes to reduce the weight and add some bi directional fiber tape from the tape drawer.