Prebuilt Spars worth the expense?
Posted: Thu Jan 07, 2021 4:40 pm
by OnAirCreative
Hey Guys,
After 10 years working on my fuse…yes ten years 0 : I’m on the brink of purchasing the wing sub-kit for my Legacy Sonex.
I’m purchasing the extruded angle option but the pre-built spar is pretty steep. Any thoughts on the merit of spending $2200 extra
to have the spar ship pre-assembled.
Thanks for the help
Kevin
#1439 Sonex Builder
Re: Prebuilt Spars worth the expense?
Posted: Thu Jan 07, 2021 5:54 pm
by Rofomoto
My opinion is no. Didn’t take that long to build. Took me three weeks working off and on after I made all the pieces . Bolt and hammer technique. Billy
Re: Prebuilt Spars worth the expense?
Posted: Thu Jan 07, 2021 6:02 pm
by Sonex1517
My opinion is yes.
Anything that sped up the build time was worth it to me. My two cents.
Re: Prebuilt Spars worth the expense?
Posted: Thu Jan 07, 2021 9:58 pm
by racaldwell
My opinion would be to spend that money on something nice for the panel. I built Xenos spars and they were the easiest part of the wing, well nothing was hard, just tedious and time consuming. They went together like they should, no surprises. I used a rivet gun and bucking bar with the spar web vertical and held straight with clamps while riveting.
Rick Caldwell
Xenos 0057
Re: Prebuilt Spars worth the expense?
Posted: Fri Jan 08, 2021 12:04 am
by NWade
Kevin -
If it helps, I built my fuselage last and it took me the better part of 5 years. It’s definitely the slowest part of the build, what with all of the wiring and cockpit details and FWF stuff to deal with.
As for the pre-built spars: What’s about 120 hours worth to you? That’s how long it took me to do the spars. All yourself how much your labor is worth, and how many months or years it takes you to get ~100 hours of time in the workshop (plus a little, to practice the solid rivet driving before doing it on the spar for real).
It would’ve been closer to 100 hours for me, but I misread the plans and put about 200 driven rivets in from the wrong side and had to drill them all out and re-rivet it all again. (And it disheartened me enough that I took a whole year off from building) 
The bolt & hammer method works best if you are working solo. A 3x gun is faster, if you have a buddy or partner to help buck the rivets.
Take care and best of luck with your project no matter which way you go!
—Noel
Sonex #1339
Re: Prebuilt Spars worth the expense?
Posted: Fri Jan 08, 2021 1:24 am
by Rynoth
Just to give a little context into how long the spars take to build vs the rest of the plane, here’s my timelapse video.
So, I setup the camera and started filming that video about 270 hours into the build. The VERY beginning of the timelapse is me starting work on my right wing spar (the left was already completed at this point.) As you can see, that work flashes by in under 4 seconds. Then, another 2.5 minutes pass before I moved the plane to the hanger (still had a LOT of work to go from there to get the plane airworthy.) The time I spent building the spars myself was a tiny blip in the context of the whole project. I logged 50 hours to build and mate the spars (not including angle fabrications, but I don’t think those are part of the spar kit upgrade, rather the extruded angle upgrade), and logged 1377 total hours until my airworthiness certificate.
If I did it again I would seriously consider the extruded angle upgrade, but definitely wouldn’t bother with purchasing the pre-built spars.
Edit: I just found another, slower video of building my right wing spar. This is 18.5 hours of work in 1 minute 14 seconds. I still had about 4 hours of work to go at the end of this video before the spar was done.
To put it another way, if the prebuilt spars are $2200 and it took me 50 hours, I paid myself $44/hour to do it myself. I’ll take that.
Re: Prebuilt Spars worth the expense?
Posted: Fri Jan 08, 2021 2:03 am
by Bryan Cotton
I went with prebuilt spars because I was building with my kid. Otherwise I would have skipped them.
Re: Prebuilt Spars worth the expense?
Posted: Fri Jan 08, 2021 10:33 am
by mbean
I agree with Robbie, they are worth it to speed up the process.
I purchased them for this reason. Finishing left wing assembly this week.
Feels a bit like cheating but nice to have everything exactly as it should be with solid rivets done and pilot holes drilled by the factory.
Mike
Re: Prebuilt Spars worth the expense?
Posted: Fri Jan 08, 2021 10:59 am
by Sonerai13
One word - YES. 
Re: Prebuilt Spars worth the expense?
Posted: Fri Jan 08, 2021 12:07 pm
by avee8r
In general, I have the problem of coming up with a spare $2200. Back in 2010 or so when I build mine I didn’t have the extra either. I found using the hammer and bolt method very satisfying both in the execution and results. Many people stopped by and marveled at the simplicity of the process. It was like playing a piano, you could hear the pitch change with each strike of the hammer, almost to the point of not needing to use a rivet “go / no go” tool to check them.
My advise FWIW… Take the time to make the spars yourself, enjoy the build, it’ll be over too soon, and use the go/no go tool just to be sure!
Happy Landings
John
N50NX
Re: Prebuilt Spars worth the expense?
Posted: Fri Jan 08, 2021 1:00 pm
by MichaelFarley56
If you want to build just to build, don’t worry about any of the options.
If you want to fly and you can afford the premade angle kit, do that one first.
Then, if you can afford the finished spars, get those.
Re: Prebuilt Spars worth the expense?
Posted: Fri Jan 08, 2021 8:17 pm
by Scott Todd
You (We) started down this path because you want to build. If you just want to fly, go buy a flying one. Its much cheaper 
Guys like Michael above and Graeme are regular posters that have been having a blast with their purchases. But having said that, its a lot to build.
The Spar is basically a Robot build where you just follow the directions and a week later you are done. When you get to the panel, rigging, painting, cowls, canopy, etc, a lot of decision making and such can slow you down and you will look back on that spar build and think it was a piece of cake and flew right by.
Re: Prebuilt Spars worth the expense?
Posted: Fri Jan 08, 2021 8:34 pm
by mike.smith
Whatever makes the most sense to you. That’s probably not very helpful. I scratch built, and money was a huge concern. The spars were not difficult to build, they just took a bit of head scratching to figure out at first. I’ve never built from a kit, so I have no idea what it’s like to have a pre-built anything (except the welded stuff). My pace was an average of 500 hours/year building. My Kitlog wing pages start here: http://www.mykitlog.com/users/display_l … 07&row=347
Re: Prebuilt Spars worth the expense?
Posted: Fri Jan 08, 2021 10:06 pm
by dbdevkc
10 years on the fuselage? You might want to get the pre-built spars. With 20-20 hind sight they are not that difficult to do, but took me forever to get done because I had no confidence in my abilities with solid rivets - and there are a couple of spots in particular that are relativity difficult (IMO) to rivet. After doing 90% of one spar I had an experienced builder come take a look and he gave hit approval and basically said looks good -keep going.
Depends on money availability and confidence in riveting ability. But as it turns out, the riveting is not as hard as I initially thought.
Re: Prebuilt Spars worth the expense?
Posted: Fri Jan 08, 2021 11:31 pm
by Darick
Once I built the tail kit, I knew I could do the wings and fuselage. However I didn’t trust myself to make the most important part (IMHO) that would keep the wings on. So I bought the factory spar knowing it was built by experienced hands. When I drilled the completed wing/spar assembly to the fuselage, it was exactly spot on.
Re: Prebuilt Spars worth the expense?
Posted: Sat Jan 09, 2021 12:21 pm
by pappas
Since I built a legacy Waiex and a B model, I have both built the spars and used the factory prebuilt. The prebuilt certainly allowed me to move along faster but building the spars myself was not hard to do. It just took about 10 hours per spar if I recall. Even with building the spars myself, I finished and flew the legacy Waiex in 5 1/2 months.
Trust yourself. If you can build the rest of the airframe, you already have the skills to build the spars. Buy something cool for the panel instead.
Re: Prebuilt Spars worth the expense?
Posted: Mon Jan 11, 2021 1:48 pm
by OnAirCreative
Thanks for all the help guys. I really appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts and experiences with me.
Kevin
1439 Sonex