New Admiration for Sheet Metal Workers

This is what I have spent all my time doing this past week. Sheet metal work, especially with three dimensional forms, is HARD!.

These plans:

And these tools:

Became this “wing.”

The B, wasn’t the grade – it was an index mark that helped me keep the ribs and spar oriented properly. For reasons not entirely clear to me I got an A – I think it was a “it’s your last quarter, here’s a free A” A. This even though, in a last-ditch, frantic effort to put lipstick on my pig of a wing, I tried to polish it with aluminum polish and took off the protective oxidization. Ah, metalwork!

This was my last project ever of airplane school. It’s all over but the final. Next week I promise a long post full of the often unpleasant antics of my soon-to-be former classmates, but for today, gaze in wonder upon my slightly helical aluminum creation.