Preparing the Wing Parts.
Once upon a time, Roy Schieder was shoveling fish heads off the back the Orca, a rickety sort of boat that was about the size of a wooden wash tub with a 4-person jucuzzi addition. (I done seen one from my trailer!). Roy was grumbling like a foremast jack, flinging bloody fish guts and heads overboard, creating a crimson, fish parts soup off the stern. And then, suddenly, up comes the shark.
Roy, eyes like cheese pizzas with black olives in the middle, backed slowly to the cabin. His cigarette smolders as he muttered to Captain Quint, “You’re going to need a bigger boat!”
A few minutes later, scrambling along the gunwale to get a better look, Richard Dryfus, playing a younger Mr. Hooper from Sesame Street, says “That’s a 20 footer!” only to be corrected by Quint, “twenty-five, and 3 tons on ‘im”.
Stuff we used:
Polyethylene plastic sheets Home Depot
4 16ft 2X8’s River Head Building Supply
2 8ft 2X8’s River Head Building Supply
2 4X8 sheet 1/4″ Luon River Head Building Supply
2 Gallons Bonderite C-IC 33 AERO – Aircraft Spruce and Specialty
2 Gallons Bonderite M-CR 1201 AERO – Aircraft Spruce and Specialty
AKZO NOBEL EPOXY PRIMER 2GAL – Aircraft Spruce and Specialty
The boys on the Orca caught themselves in a bit of dilemma, as sometimes happens when you go big. Our wings are bigger than Jaws, which means we are going to need a longer Sling Building Bench (SBB, this is aviation, let’s use our acronyms, kiddies!) and we would need some bigger everything else too.
The bigger interior ribs and other wing gizzards would be the first order of business. Cutting up the fish heads, before dealing with the shark, so to speak. Fortunately, the gizzards still fit in the allodining chum tubs that we used for the empennage pieces. So, after deburring we did the allodining thing, giving the little fish head ribs and wing whatnots a nice, golden color.
And then came the skins and Spars, The Big bits. The Spars come buck riveted together out of lots of layers of 1/8” thick 6061 aluminum. It’s a good 50 pounds or so, not sure exactly. Can’t weigh it, but it had been through a weight reduction program, evidenced by a row of strategically cut hexagonal holes. It gave off a nice skeletal industrial look of minimalism. And yet, it is strong enough to hold itself, the rest of the airplane and its contents away from the edges of the air while potentially pulling up to 9Gs. (Edges here can be defined by trees, junk yards, old quarries, houses, lawn ornaments, other airplanes, etc.)
hundred odd pounds O’ Sling wing Spars
And then, there were the vast acreage of the skins, big coiling floppy sheets that splayed themselves across the dollhouse sized Sling Building Benches with metallic contempt.
Sorry, conjuring the last paragraph has the Connecticut Slingers’ Ministry of Information stuck in Soaring Dogma. Let’s start this over, read on, please!
This was a problem that the telegenic Evan Brunye brilliantly observed with his length deficient wing assembly bench. Our approach to dealing with the ungainly and unruly skins was to dimple them into conformance, as directed by Mike Blyth. To make this process with efficient dispatch, we spread the SBBs apart with a piece of 2X8 mounted between the two benches about 8 inches below the tops supported by a couple of 2X4’s screwed to the bench legs. In addition to making the bottom die dead even with the SBB tops, it makes a great spot for holding drinks while working on the wing.
With DRDT-2 lever-action dimpling tool neatly ensconced on the 2X8 drink holder, dimpling the wing skins was very easy and, dear reader, dare we say fun. It was simple as positioning the predrilled hole over the bottom die, pull lever down, to detent pull lever up, move piece to next hole, repeat. We watched youtube videos while we worked, a nice dimpling Shangri-la. We would pay for this insouciance later with a bit of slogging and wretched allodining trauma.
The thing is the skins were too big to allodine using the tubs we used for the gizzard parts. It was on to a bigger something else.
There really are not many affordable options for the shade tree slinger when it comes to allodining. Polypropylene tanks big enough for the job are a small fortune. After our ‘hood went through gentrification a while back, all the abandoned but still useful junk is gone. Sadly, it’s been harder and harder to find an abandoned boat hull or jacuzzi capable of holding enough allodining solution for doing the skins, and we could forget about borrowing the neighbor’s kiddy pool, they just won’t understand.
What we needed was set of custom purpose-built Sling Wing Skin Soaking Tubs (SWSST). With a quick febrile phone call to Riverside Building Supply, and then a bit of credit card inflation, A bunch of 16-foot 2X8’s and several sheets of Luon were dropped in our driveway, the scene of our environmental incorrectness.
Next came an afternoon of cutting and screwing resulting in a couple of 14X4 foot boxes big enough for the skins. Then borrowing an idea from Sling Build UK in England. We got some pond liner from Just Pond Liners and lined each wooden box, clamping the liner to the sides of the SWSST using genuine Ghetto Grade hand clamps from Harbor Fright to accessorize. So far so good. One for the Bonderite C-IC 33 Aero Phosphoric etching acid, the other for the 1201 allodine stuff.
SWSST with the SWSDF in the background
Well, after a nice bath in our assortment of cancerous toxins, our skins would need a rinse and dry. Our lovingly hand-crafted Sling Wing Skin Drying Frame (SWSDF) would do the trick.
Easily built from 2 X 4s, cut to 6 feet, with some cross pieces out of 1 by 3 strapping and 2 X8 left over from the SWSST build. We positioned the 4 ½ 2X8’s a foot high enough on the legs to clear the SWSST’s. You can see the photos to get an idea. These spread the 2X4 legs wide enough apart to clear the SWSSTs. We didn’t think we needed to make the SWSDF as long as the SWSST’s, so we made it only 8 feet. We used 1X3 strapping for the rest of the rails and bracing, which added a nice third world feel to the affair.
The last bit of furniture was a Sling Wing Gizzards Rack, (SWGR) a 4 X 8 frame out of 1 X 3 covered with hardware cloth Flemmings in Stonington CT. We made some attractive legs about 1 foot long. The beauty of this beast is just how well this unit fits nicely on the Sling Wing Sling, with room under it for wing stuff.
Sling Wing Gizzards Rack with gizzards. Note the side of the SWS to the upper left of the photo.
Right, on to business.
We had ordered the wing and empennage together, but the assembly time of the tail pieces could only be described using periods of time spent at the DMV as a unit of measure Never the less, we had some experience to build on, and we could progress to the wings.
So it was back to the deburring twist and scrape. Lots and lots of it, and the pieces were bigger. Which was more time consuming, but straight forward. For hours we were getting into that glorious Roy Scheider fish guts bucket fun. Pick up part, crank the burs off the rivet holes, drag the deburring tool over edges. Grab the next part, repeat. Lots of YouTube, Mojogrip, Evan Brunye and Sling UK to inspire us through the handiwork.
Deburred, dimpled and ready for a bath.
The dimpling was easy and quick. The coolest thing was how well the dimpler setup worked, we laid the skin on our SLBBs, the carpeting on the bench top made sliding it to and froe smooth and easy. It was the most fun we have had with our dimpler yet. Sucks that all the other tasks weren’t as much fun, or went so quick.
Bath Time.
After all the parts were scraped, deburred and dimpled, it was time for the Allodining. We were very enthused to try the brand spankin’ new SWSSTs and SWGR. The one nasty crusty carbuncle on a baboon butt (hee Heee Hee, I wrote the word butt! ha ha) of the whole deal was the Alodine 1201 solution. Sewer water brown, Cancer toxic stinky, and worst of all, Landing Fee expensive. The step with small gizzard parts soaking in phosphoric acid brought us precious little amusement with the fizzy fizzy thing. But that was it. There wasn’t any fizzy fizzy in the 1201 alloding solution. The parts just turned that nice golden-brown color. Ho hum with lots of mess.
Then came the Great Plains of skins. We realized that to fill the SWSST with enough to completely immerse the Skins in the stuff would have produced just too much toxic waste to dispose of easily, and the cost would be excessive. We decided to take the brush on approach, using less 1201 fluid, mess and cost. This is not our preferred method. We had already tried the brushing with limited success on the empennage skins, which resulted in a lot of blotching. That time, were using a continuous brushing method trying to keep the wings in contact with the allodine solution. After the recommended 2 minutes of slogging the allodine solution over the skins, we ended up with a marbling effect. Great if this were going to be some sort of floor covering.
This time we would brush on let it set then rinse off. Which we did, gingerly and reverently laying the top and bottom skin pieces in the SWSST and brushed the solution on, only to watch the little rivulets of brown fluid streak off the skin, leaving it bare. SO, we brush more on. And then more. We decided to treat the skins for 5 minutes before lifting the skin out of the allodine 1201, and hung it from the SWSDF using safety wire. Wonderful stuff, safety wire, Like Marshmallow fluff, an underrated and underutilized item.
Well, in spite of our best efforts with our humble SWSSTs, we are saddened to report that the allodining on the skin had the blotchy uniformity of Rorschach test pattern #432 for prediciting aviatory prowess. We had failed. Jackson Pollock would be shaking his head. Drat.
Rorschach test pattern #432 for prediciting aviatory prowess. Mixed media including the bottom wing skin and an obsene amount of allodine solution.
So, we made an executive decision. If the piece was too big, we would not be allodining it. We give up. Let’s move on.
Fortunately, we could still do the two-part epoxy make over, easily done from a technical perspective. The ungainly skins remained hanging on the SWSDF, which made it convenient to blitz them with the primer. We kept them outside in the open air, we didn’t even have to use a tent like Elon! So, we had an easy time of it with the skins, go figure 
The gizzard parts were downright facile. Lay a bunch on the SWGR with the flanges up. paint. Repeat. lots of times.
All the wing gizzards and skins ready for epoxy priming
Next: Meccano time.