Forums at Oshkosh did not prepare me for the time it would take to debur, or the best way to do it.

At first, I had the impression that deburring was all about the sharp edges left around holes from the drilling process. Although it is necessary to debur the holes, far more time is spent deburring the sharp edges of the parts themselves. Due to my false impression, I also believed that the deburring process occurred after clecoing everything together and drilling out the holes. So quite a lot of calendar time passed before I was prepared to start by assembling the stabilizer. What I should have done instead, is started by deburring the edges of all the parts, which I could have done in parallel with reading the manuals and building a workbench. Most of the parts are very small, so a small corner of the workshop can be used for deburring. Of course the holes themselves are deburred after drilling, when the assembly has been taken apart.

Initially deburring for me was a painfully slow process, and I was convinced I could do a better quality job as well. At the cottage, I enjoyed using a fine single cut file and a chainsaw sharpening file while sitting on the deck with the chipmunks, but it might have taken me 20 years to do the deburring that way. I needed something faster. The following paragraphs describe the abrasives and methods that I used.

Roloc discs were recommended to me, but I found them impractical. Since they are single-sided, and can be spun only in one direction, it was not possible to get into some corners. They are also too coarse, so they created scratches. I also did not have enough control holding the part in one hand and the die grinder in the other.

Shown in the photos are the abrasives that I ended up using, and they worked extremely well. A lot of aluminum dust was created in this process, making a good dust mask and safety goggles mandatory. I enjoyed listening to music with headphones, even though I was wearing earplugs.

Standard Abrasives 850708 Buff & Blend Discs 6" x 1/2" Very Fine
For deburring many corners of thin aluminum, such as wing ribs, I used a thin nylon disc imprenated with aluminum oxide on a bench grinder. This allows control of the rib with both hands which is important to ensure it does not get caught and flung across the room. The disc is very flexible, so it follows the curves. It is just the right width to get between the flanges of the ribs. The edges of the part are almost polished, although with additional pressure, it is possible the wear off material if necessary. Like a file, the offside edge can become sharp, so it is best to debur the inside edges of the ribs first and the outside edges last, to ensure there are no sharp edges adjacent to the wing skin. The wheels wear down relatively quickly. I was able to trim the worn down wheels with scissors to maintain a circular shape. I mounted the small wheels between washers on the end of a long screw, which I put in a drill. This allowed me to debur awkward places, such as the inside edges of the aileron skins, so I did not discard them until they were less than 2 inches in diameter. I used 15 wheels deburring the wing kit.

Standard Abrasives 882105 Unitized Wheel 1" x 1" x 3/16" Medium
3M Scotch-Brite Unitized Wheel 1" x 1" x 3/16" EXL
Unitized wheels are much higher density versions of the same idea, and look like a grinding wheel until examined closely. Small ones are available that are screwed onto the end of a mandrell. Buy a couple of mandrells so you can switch between new and worn down wheels. I also had success using a long screw and trapping the wheel between nuts. I put these wheels in my drill press and used them for large holes and curves in the small parts. I did the lightening holes in my wing ribs before doing the flanges, so my hands would not be cut by the sharp edges. The edge of the aluminum dug into the wheel and made a groove. The groove deburred both sides of the aluminum edge at the same time, and produced a very smooth polished finish. After the wheel was full of grooves that were too deep, I ruined an old file and reshaped it for even smaller holes. I used about 10 of these wheels to debur my wing kit. There is more than one grade of wheel density, but in practise, I found little difference between them. Harder ones last a little longer.

3M Scotch-Brite 6" Cut & Polish 7A Medium Deburring Wheel
This is a much larger version of the unitized wheel. The only supplier I could get this from was Avery Tools, and they shipped it promptly. I was told that one wheel will be sufficient for the entire kit and that is likely true. I bought it after deburring the tail kit, so I used it on the wings only and have worn it down perhaps only 3/8". I also bought the adapter to mount the wheel in my drill press. This wheel was fabulous for deburring the straight edges of long parts, of which I did shorter ones with the wheel in the drill press, and longer ones with the wheel on the bench grinder. Balancing the 12 foot long leading edge skins was a challenge. Since they were thin, I did them with the wheel on the drill press, so the weight of the skins would not cause too much material to be removed, as it would have been with the bench grinder.. I trimmed this large wheel by running a belt sander with coarse paper against it in the opposite direction (this is a great way to create dust). Filing it was ineffective.

With the correct equipment, I needed little skill to debur and achieved excellent results in a very reasonable amount of time. I only wish I knew this when I was deburring my tail the hard way. It took me 66 hours to debur my tail, but only 85 hours to debur both wings :-)