First Hatch Rib

Today we laid up the first hatch rib.

To revisit, we added many more stations for these ribs and, since the critical line is the outside of the curve, used that as the guide.  The metal strips were accounted for when placing the outside blocks.  We kept the inside blocks very close, requiring only very thin shims to apply proper pressure to the plies.

Compared to our original laminations, this was very straightforward and relatively simple to accomplish proper results, even with eight layers.

Note that the vertical element seen in the foreground of this photo was added as a point of leverage used while positioning the glued bundle, which starts at the tight end of the curve.  We drop in the glued bundle, then the metal bundle (which consists of three strips) then apply the shims and push to the outside.