And More Ribs

I spent the afternoon working on a couple of ribs.

What you see (if you look hard) in the above is one rib in the jig with all of the capstrip cut and fitted, and one rib out of the jig.  The rib out of the jib has its gussets on the down side all glued in place.  You will also note that all of the gussets for both ribs are laid out ready to glue in place.

My routine is to take a rib whose gussets on one side have been glued and place, and set up long enough to handle, out of the jig and flip it over ready to glue the second side gussets.  Then I cut and fit the capstrip for another rib in the jig.  When that is complete, I install the gussets for both ribs.

Just the opposite view of the same thing. I always wear latex gloves when working with the epoxy.  Fortunately, T-88 does not have a strong odor.

This photo shows my mixing setup.  The little medicinal cups came from SystemThree, who are the manufacturers of the T-88 epoxy.  So did the mixing sticks.  I found the mixing sticks a bit of a problem.  The are quite wide (obviously tongue depressors) and have rounded ends.  The rounded ends make it difficult to get into the corners of the mixing cups.  So I cut the mixing sticks in half and sand one end square.  You can see a cut stick lying across the full stick that has had that treatment.

I mix 5 ml each of resin and hardner in the cup.  The graduations on the cup make it very easy to accurately measure the 1:1 ratio specified for the T-88.  It takes two batches to do two ribs. 

This last photo, taken as the sun was heading down, shows the completed ribs.  The rib on the right, not in the jig, is totally complete.  The rib in the jig, on the left, will be removed from the jig when the glue is sufficiently set up to handle, and flipped over for application of the gussets on the "bottom" side.