Fairing in a curve

[BobDz]

That's actually a boat building term. The use in aircraft is to have smooth skins on leading edges, etc where there is a curved rib that has been fluted.

One of the EAA Tech Counselors that was here last Saturday, explained this to me. I had never seen it before, so thought that it was worth sharing.

Basically, you take a strip of scrap skin material and wrap it over the curved rib, and then tweak the fluting to have maximum contact between the skin and the rib, and therefore a faired, or smooth, curve.

In the attached picture, I used a hacksaw blade, being careful to keep the teeth off of the aluminum.
As you can see by the gaps between the rib and the hacksaw blade, this particular rib needs a bit of tweaking in order for the skin to be smooth.

[Bryan Cotton]

Bob,
A strip of scrap aluminum also works for truing up flanges.