How
to Make
a Set of Ribs for a Tapered Wing
There are several ways to fabricate a rib sets for tapered wings. The method shown here is the fastest and one of the most accurate. The
only drawback is that the ribs must be evenly spaced assuming all the ribs
are the same thickness.
If ribs are needed that do not space equally then you will have to
interpolate those ribs from the surrounding ribs or glue an over-sized blank
in place and then sand it to shape with the wing panel.
Another way to make ribs for a tapered wing is manually plot or use rib-plotting
software to draw each rib pattern individually. The ribs are then cut
in pairs.
This is my least favorite way as it is the most time-consuming, tedious and
presents
more opportunities to make mistakes.
The method being presented requires two airfoil patterns for an entire wing
panel instead of one for each rib.
The idea is to shape all the ribs between the two patterns.
The number of blanks can be determined one of two ways:
Method 1: Determine the wing span. Determine the rib spacing.
Divide the span by the rib spacing and add two.
For example, if you are building a 56" wing having ribs spaced 2" apart then
you would need 30 ribs (15 per panel).
- Number of ribs = (wing span ÷ rib spacing) +2
Method 2: Cut a random number of blanks and then space them equally
to make a wing of the desired span.
Also see
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