A great resourse on the internet is the Homebuilder's Headquarters under the member's section on the EAA site. As beej mentioned in another thread, Tony Bingelis' three books are worth their weight in gold. (Sat across from him once when I was at THE FLY-In back in 1991. Great person ! Learned just from having a casual conversation wtih him.)
A lot of the articles are written by Tony B. Many categories are on the site, Desigining, Building, Registering, Testing, Operating, etc.) Under Building-Articles-Basic Contruction Practice, for example, they talk about a lot of the basic stuff.
One that I just read was "Modifications... Good or Bad ? Part of the article read:
(quote) Sometimes a builder may unwittingly weaken the aircraft structure dangerously when in his mind he thinks he is really strengthening it.
A particular example comes to mind involving an individual who figured he would install the same thickness plywood skin all the way to the wing tip, instead of scarfing in the required thinner skin for the outboard wing section. He figured by installing the plywood skin in one piece he would eliminate all that scarfing work. This would make the wing stronger, he thought.
Unfortunately, instead of simply making the wing stronger, he only made it structurally stiffer and heavier. The increased thickness in the outer wing panel skin stiffened the wing structure, all right, but it also caused the wing flexibility to move inboard into the cockpit area where the spar was not beefed up nor designed to take the additional localized bending stress of a stiffened wing.
This modification, probably more than higher G forces encountered, later contributed to the reported catastrophic wing failure. (unquote)
It would have been something I would have thought the same as the guy/girl that did it too. Something to always keep in mind.
Anywho.. a lot of great reading on there for thoses interested.
