Making the ribs

The 3rd system i used to build the ribs
overall view of third version of template. Forgive met he rough look. Made a few errors while designing and making it. Had to improvise a bit.
detailof nose. I used the same holes in the template as Henri Mignet advised. It is needd to be able to drill into the caps to place the screws to fasten the rib-nose. You see small sticks and large sticks. The small sticks are to get the caps between. The large one are to be able to draw a line into the finished rib. I use a ruler between those two large sticks. Maybe you see here that I coloured ONE side of the large sticks. Done to not use wrong side of stick to lay ruler against.
End of rib. Here I line up the caps. I make the end of the rib a bit longer than needed. Just to be sure to avoid making it too short. I will cut of the part when making the insert for the trailing edge part.
Here you see Stefan (the newest volenteer) placing the wet caps in the template. Note the small sticks on the template. They have the same functions as the nails on Mignets template. The longer sticks are there to help to draw lines on the ribs once the plywood in fixed. Those lines guide you while shooting the staples for the verticals at the front and you also draw the cut-off line at the rear (the rib is made a bit too long to forgive errors) and a centerline as reference for later.
Milko is cutting a cap to right seize. He also indicates the part that needs to be wet for better surviving the bending. You need to wet the front of the top cap and the rear of the bottom cap.
Karel-Marc makes the caps wet. They bend easier when wet.
Caps are placed into the template. Two verticals are only needed. You see them placed between some blocks for line-up.
placing and glued the rib-nose. It is screwed onto the caps by four small screws. You need the hole in the tremplate to get close enough to the caps. Note: make some kind of line to see if your nose pushed the caps wide enough to form the airfoil.
putting glue on the caps. Don't do both plywoods at once! Glue one and stapled it. Then go to the rear plywood part.
put a staple at the beginning. Here you can easily see where you need to shoot. No need to use the shooting-guide. Place a rope (low-budget kind) under the staple!
take some rope and shoot a staple at the other side. This will prevent the plywood from sliding away from its ideal place. Note that the plywood was cut to nearly the right seize. I did need to do that due to those large sticks. Had I made those sticks removable, it was not so much needed to cut the plywood to a near airfoil size. It might be needed if the shooting guide does not reach far enough. Just try and decide what shape will easy made and can be used with your shooting-guide.
Now you canuse the shooting guide to staple around. I noticed that I somtimes needed to shoot at sight if a stick was blocking the schooting-guide under the plywood. It caused not a great problem. Here you see at what distance I placed staples. There is just enough place to place one between.
I don't have a pressure controlled staple machine. So ... we just hit the staples with a hammer to have a nice pressure of the plywood onto the caps.
That is what those large sticks serve for. Just to make that you can place a ruler against them and draw a line on the rib. What lines? OK, the lines where the verticals middle line are under to guide you to shoot staples onthe right place, the ribs centerline to later have some control about the AoA build into the wing, the rear line of rib where you cut of to place the trailing edge parts against.
Jeroen puts some glue onto the rear of the ribs caps.
Jeroen staples the ribs rear plywood part. the most difficult place to staple is the rear. Near the guides for the caps you have no place to use the shooting-guide. So ... shooting on sight. Lifting the plywood a bit helps.
All staples are there. The last line to draw is the center-line of the rib. I made from some rest-over a plate that fits over the blocks and sticks. The plate is lined-up thanks to those taller sticks in the front and the rear of the template.
Here you see the back of the template. You see more holes than needed for the sticks. Well, two reasons. First ... euh .. i misdrilled a first time and had to use the other half of the plate. Second, you use a stick to push the rib out of its place. Do it gentle and do it from one side to the other. All you now still need it is router the outside, the nose and the front spar hole after you removed the staples by pulling the cord once the glue is dry.
This upside down mounted router has a cutter and a devise to follow a ridge. If you let the devise follow the caps, the plywood will be cut in the correct shape.
Here you see Eric Foriers using the router for the first time during a hobbyday in my garden. It is super easy to use ...and fast. Sadly i lost all the pics of the template i used to make the weight reduction holes and the rounded nose. All i can tell you is that the making of the templates is easy and the real cutting work goes suuuuuper fast. Extra note: the rib used in this picture is of a previous rib making system. Its caps were thicker. Too thick to be exact. And i used another kind of template to make these.here you see a dozen ribs already made. In 2 hours we could glue 4 ribs ... if all material was at hand. Note that the last ones only have the holes to let the router pass. Some ribs still have the verticals in the ribs stapled. They need to be removed before the glueing to the spar. Oh yeah, nearly forgot to mention that using the router to get the plywood in the right shape takes less than a minute a rib.