It’s been a bit of a challenging couple weeks at the airplane factory. Ashley and I got a little carried away while dimpling and accidentally put an extra hole in the left wing leading edge.

I was ready to replace the skin (at a cost of around $120) but I consulted with Van’s and posted pictures on the online forum. Van’s replied that I should be able to clean the hole up and fabricate a patch. Here is the hole flattened and reamed out with a #18 reamer to get it clean, round and crack free.

I also drilled and dimpled new holes on either side of the nearby skin flange hole. This way I can abandon that hole and don’t have to dimple so close to the “extra” hole just in case there’s any residual stress. This is probably overkill but it won’t hurt anything. Next, I epoxied a small patch that will sit next to the rib and together they will cover the hole, allowing me to fill the hole from the outside with epoxy or JB-Weld.