The Little Toot plans call for either a stick truss rib, or a plywood web rib. In the case of my airplane, I've decided to build the plywood web version due to its ease of construction and the extra strength given by using solid wood. It is believed that plywood ribs will extract a 20 pound weight penalty from the finished airframe, but the construction time savings is substantial and well worth it in my opinion. There are four jigs which we'll be needing to construct the wings. Please refer to the tooling of this website for details on how to build them. I like to fabricate lots of little pieces and parts ahead of time so that I can get busy later on with the actual construction of the plane without having to stop down every few minutes to fabricate something.
Let's start with the wing attach brackets.
Wing Attach Brackets made from 0.125" 4130 Steel.
The templates are shown on top of finished parts.
Referring to the tooling page on this website, make the paper/cardboard templates and mark up your 1/8" 4130 steel plate. Cut out the shapes as shown. You'll need to make the parts shown on the top edge of page 501: (4) from wing attach brackets, (4) rear wing attach brackets, (4) front flying wire fitting, (2) front cabane brackets, (2) rear cabane brackets, (6) tail wire brackets. Don't drill any holes yet. POLISH THE EDGES!
TIP: 4130 is hard to cut. I used a cutoff wheel in a die grinder to get the rough shape, then switched to a grinder wheel, then sand to a nice smooth finish! It's also possible to use a plasma cutter, but I haven't personally tried this.
