Practice kits

I've got enough tools to be dangerous now, so I ordered both of Van's practice kits.  These let you practice the fundamental airplane construction skills before actually tackling something that will fly.

Here is the toolbox kit.  They leave the blue plastic on all the aluminum sheet from the factory to protect it.

It probably took me 5 hours or so.  Lots of deburring, drilling, dimpling, and riveting.  Pretty much love my pneumatic squeezer already, not sure how folks get along without them. That page you see is all of the instructions for that 5 hours of work, it fits on 1 page.

Here is the finished product.

It came with a cool sticker to put on when your done, but I couldn't help myself, had to go on the big box:

Here is the mostly-finished airfoil.  Figured I would hold off bending the leading edge and riveting the trailing edge so I can practice on that just before I do it on the real airplane surfaces.

And a line of back-riveted stiffners.  Back riveting leaves some awesome flush rivets behind.