Started the day with…. yep, you guessed it deburring and priming on the pilot-side outboard slat. After re-assembly the skin was riveted to the spar and now all four slats pieces are complete, bar the tips.
While waiting for the primer to dry I had gone back to hacking away at the tips to fit the ends of the slats. Eventually I tried fitting one into the gap and it looked to me like it was completely out of the right shape. Had I cut it too much? Was the shape of the slat wrong? A little research on the builder web site showed pictures of completed slats with perfect fitting tips so I started to think that I just had to try a different approach.
I eventually managed to get one into the gap but with way too big a gap on one side but I found that by wiggling it around I could get the gap to fill in with tip material from the back (this is a lousy description). Before I knew it we had a tip inside a slat. I quickly drilled through the pre-cut holes and cleco’d it in place.
Like with the metal, the holes were drilled to size 30 and the tip removed for deburring. I then re-assembled and old-school hand-riveted the slat in place with A4 rivets. Our first tip was in!
I repeated the technique on the other three tips and I soon had 4 finished slats.
This completes the slats until the wings are finished and the two halves will be joined prior to attaching to the wing.