With the fuselage squared away
I feel its time to move on to the wings.
As with the previous steps of the build, I start by making a part reference sheet and trace all the parts. The idea here is to identify each part so others can easily see what parts are what and where they go.
Once I had the parts identified and had read through the instruction manual for the wings a few times, I felt confident moving forward. As I've stated before, this is my first Willy Nillies build, and I really want it to go well. I placed the ribs in piles according to the wing panel they go in.
To assemble the wings, I set up a simple building board to help me build a flat and square wing. The base is a scrap section of laminate countertop that I know to be a flat surface. On top of that, I attached a double layer of dollar tree foam board to serve as the surface that the pins can go through and hold things in place. For this simple build, it worked really well! The foam board held the pins much better than I expected. Given the nature of the material, it's not a long lasting surface, but it costs $1 for a 20"x30" sheet, so a worthwhile investment.
I pinned the leading edge of each wing panel down to the board, with a piece of wax paper between the wood and the building board. Rather than pinning thru the balsa, thus leaving holes that can be seen through transparent willykote, I pinned along the front and back of the piece, thus wedging it down to the surface and holding it quite tightly.
From there, I dry fit the ribs, trailing edge, and the lower spar. Once these were in place, I took a scrap piece of 1"x1" aluminum angle I picked up to ensure that each rib was sitting perpendicular to the leading and trailing edges. Note: the first and last ribs (those that mate between the different panels of the wing) were not dry fit yet. With the main ribs in place, I used thin CA and one of the small capillary tips to apply a very small amount of glue to all the joints. I only did a small drop at first, to make sure I didn't make it hard to pull off the wax paper. No matter what I do, I can't seem to figure out which side of the paper the wax is on. With the main ribs in place, I dry fit the remaining outer ribs and set them to the proper angle using the gauges provided with the kit. With all these glued in place, I placed the top spar in place and glued it down.
With glue applied to the outer ribs, I removed the first wing panel from the building board. I then used the thin CA again to apply more glue to the joints to ensure a secure attachment. With one wing panel successfully assembled, I proceeded to follow the same steps to complete the remaining wing panels. The wing tip panels were done with the trailing edge pined down first, rather than the leading edge, given the angles of the leading edge.
With the 4 wing panels glued up, I moved on to fitting the dihedral braces thru the end ribs and between the top and bottom spars. The end ribs come with a small window pre-cut in them, but this needs to be enlarged to properly fit with braces. I chose to fit my braces towards the trailing edge side of the windows. Just to make it easier to keep things consistent. I kept it simple with a razor knife and a series of stop cuts and removing the material between them. I wasn't careful on one of my wing tip ribs and ended up breaking off the section of rib between the spars and the trailing edge. Thankfully, a little bit of CA and the angle gauge set it all back in place and the dihedral brace fits perfectly.
The next step, bottom sheeting. There are a few pieces of sheeting for this center section of the wing, so dry fitting is important to ensure you use the right pieces. Once I had verified the correct pieces, I aligned the sheeting to the second rib and glued it in place. This left about 3/16th of an inch hanging past the end rib that was quickly trimmed off with a knife and sanded smooth.
And, finally. I started on the wing tips. I glued the two blocks together for each tip, and sanded them smooth and even. With the tips prepared, I marked out some reference lines to align the wing panel to, and traced the shape of the end rib onto the wing tip block. This gave me rough lines I can carve to and then I can sand to the final shape.
I still have some shaping to do on the wing tips, the sheer webbing to glue in, and the top sheeting of the center section. More on that later though.