And so it begins…after two months of intermittent shop work, floor painting, bench building and part counting, I finally generated some metal shavings! Got the HS spar flange strips filed so that they fit snugly against the spar channels’ curved corners.

There were some rather deep milling/clamping marks and scratches in the flange strips when they arrived with the kit. Of course, the plans say that you should remove all scratches, no matter how small. Just to understand what the real tolerances are, I called Van’s. Their words – if you can drag a fingernail across the scratch and your nail doesn’t get stuck in it, it’s ok.