My Flute Ensemble

Well, more accurately, my "fluting" ensemble. Tomorrow I will start the process of fluting 56 wing ribs. For those unfamiliar with the term, see here.

Oh, okay. I know you don't like to follow links.



While not inherently difficult, fluting is a time consuming job, and combined with the fact that we're in the part of the year where a temperature in the low- to mid-20s is the norm, I needed to enhance my cold weather ensemble. Even with the new Walmartts, there are exposed areas of my working garb that allow skin exposure to the elements. Primarily this was in the area of my hands. The gloves I've been using are too thin to provide any meaningful thermal protection, but their thinness allowed for fairly good finger dexterity. Aww, who am I kidding? It wasn't their thinness, it was that I had worn holes in the fingertips. While that allowed some measure of improved dexterity, it came at the cost of discomfort in the cold and the uncomfortable feeling of pushing my fingertips through the tears. I thought I'd try to get a new, warmer pair of gloves and modify them to suit the building tasks. I did that this morning and took them out to the hangar (temp: 24F) to try them out.

All I needed to do today was finish riveting the flaperon hinge braces to the rear spar stubs. That involved squeezing #4 rivets; that would be a perfect dexterity test.

The new gloves worked great!

I also picked up a combo set of ear and neck warmers. They too were welcome additions to the ensemble.

I put in a few sets of "Don't rivet me, Bro!" clecos before moving on to the LP4-3 blind rivets.

With that done. I set aside the spar stubs and grabbed the first batch of twenty-six ribs to be fluted. I'll start on those bright and frigidly early tomorrow morning.