Lower Left Wing - Tip Rib Installed

The WACO drawing says this last rib at the tip is built in place.  Despite that there is a drawing for this same rib on the WACO TEN.  Even that drawing only partially builds the rib.  I used that drawing to build most of the rib.  The plan now is to finish it to fit in place.  Instead of diagonal sticks the rib just has long skinny gussets glued on the outboard side.  There are 2 gussets on the inboard side once the diagonal tip braces get added.

 I had marked the location of the rib on the spars when I was drilling the bolt holes so my first step was to mark where the rib is attached to the tip bow.  The 4' straight edge and a couple clamps made this easy.

 Then I fit the rib and clamped it in place.  The capstrips were made longer than needed so they could be trimmed to fit.

 Th angles are all compounded by the curve of the bow so I left a little extra wood when cutting.  This allowed me to grind a little and test fit until the forward ends fit the bow nicely.

I held one stick free of the belt sander while taking a little at a time off each stick.

Once the forward ends fit well the same process was done for the aft ends of the capsrips.

 The rib was then glued in place with small sticks between the capstrips at he spar, just like the full light ribs.  These small sticks were glued to the spars so corner gussets could be added once the glue is set.  The taper of the spars at this point means there is only a corner of the capstrip touching the spar.  I puddled some glue under this corner and used a couple nails to hold the capstrip in place.  They held fine while adding the gussets.  It's there to stay.

 I added a corner block where the forward ends of the capstrips join the tip bow as well as gussets to attach the rib to the vertical sticks on the spar.  WACO glued a block to the bow between the capstrips, then just nailed them to the block.  This seemed like a very weak joint.

 The same process was done for the aft ends of the capstrips and rear spar.

The next step is to add the diagonal tip bow support sticks.