On August 9th, our EAA 1218 Chapter hosted a metal workshop.  This workshop, the first in a series, was intended to introduce techniques for working with Aluminum for aircraft construction, specifically aluminum preparation and fabrication.  John Smith is in charge of the workshops, and has built his own RV-4, and is very knowledgeable on fabrication and building.  We set up three work stations at the hanger, where we had different tasks planned.  The first station was manned by John where he was instructing on bending, corner radius cutting, and deburring.  The next station was mine, where I had the rear spar from the RV-10 Vertical Stabilizer, where we were going to be deburring, then clamping the spar caps, and match drilling the caps to the spar web.  I also had several of the ribs, and the forward spar that needed deburring on the lightening holes.  The last station was manned by Benny Butler, where he was working with one of the spar caps that had been rough cut, and needed to be filed to final dimensions, then deburred.

We had about an hour and a half of work time, and everyone seemed to enjoy the hands on aspects.  There were lots of questions, and interest was high.  Next month, we will continue the series, introducing more drilling, dimpling, countersinking, and the various riveting techniques.