Source: 2019 Q4 Beartracks, Mark Johnson
“They’re all practice.” — John Denver
My shop is filled with jigs and tools that have accumulated on shelves, drawers and bins over the years. As many of you know I’m building slower than slow, all because I have a lot to be grateful for: I work full time, I value my sleep, I’m a first time builder, from scratch, and I have a family. So things tend to sit a while in my garage, but I always seem to return to them and have to relearn a few things.
Such was the case when I realized I mis-drilled an aileron skin to the nose ribs. My spar was bowed more than my comfort range, but I didn’t notice until after I had drilled and clecoed the center skin to the nose ribs, forever locking the spar in a bow. This meant that once the spar was straightened out, either the skin or the ribs would have to be scrapped. It takes an act of congress and a bit of schmoozing for me to run off to my buddy’s bending brake to rebend a skin, plus that’s a lot of material to scrap. So I looked at my old rib fixtures, dust and acetylene soot and all, and ended up revisiting my first year of building to remake two aileron nose ribs.
Through the process, I was amazed at the mental games I put myself through, even though these parts were relatively simple and small. “That’s what, ⅛ inch off? Pfft no big deal.”… “Years from now, your airplane might never fly trimmed, and you will always think back to this day and curse yourself for making a bowed aileron!” … “Will it really matter? Surely it’s good enough. We’re not building the space shuttle. I’m sure the other side ain’t perfect either” and on and on it goes. I don’t think I ever made a conscious choice to scrap the ribs, until there were two shiny new undrilled ones in my hand. That makes the decision easier!
You could say I hurled myself into action before I could think much more about it. In the end, rebuilding a part was not very hard. I’d made the thing before, and all the tools and muscle memory eventually rose to the occasion. In fact it was actually fun creating something I already knew how to make. You feel like a pro. The biggest hurdle was the nagging feeling of going back; the turning away from relentless progress with ever increasing distance between me and my goal that will validate my life’s purpose, social status, marriage, sex appeal and career ambitions.
Whatever ridiculous feelings I had, they didn’t change the reality of the error that started it all. Those wandering #40 holes were still there, they needed to go away, “moving” them by drilling out to #30 wasn’t going to make up for it, and there was one obvious solution in a future universe where those mental games and compromises did not exist. I just had to do it. So moving backward was in fact the quickest path to progress.
The next time you need to scrap a part, be on the lookout for psychology taking the reins. Bob even noted in his builders book it’s not that hard to mess up and scrap a spar. A SPAR, can you imagine? When you wish you could uncut or undrill something, take a break from the task, put the knife down, breathe, get some advice and do your best to understand the problem.