Bimski--
This is a beautiful piece of work. When I was in college, I worked at the Grumman plant in Milledgeville, GA (Plant 66), and we did quite a few F-14 parts there. In particular, I remember the "parrot's beak," which can be clearly seen at the inboard leading edge of the swept wing. This part "disappears" into the aircraft when the wings are in the 20 degree position, and are exposed when the wing sweeps back.
We also fabricated the vertical stabilizers, which are basically boron tape spread in a very specific and complex pattern on a titanium frame. This was all done in the "lay-up" room (which was about the size of two basketball gyms), and the very very large boron lay-up rig took up about 20% of the available floor space in the northwest corner of the room.
This was in 1980-85, and the boron rig was computer controlled. All we humans did was make sure there was tape in the dispenser, and the titanium frame was bolted in and in proper alignment. The boron tape was, if I recall, deep black on one side, and a faint mustard/brown on the other. The overlay pattern was incredibly precise and would result in a diagonal diamond/checkerboard pattern.
Once each stabilizer was complete, the boron would be trimmed by laser cutter, and the stabilizer would be boom-lifted into a rack. Once the rack was full (picture one of those racks you can cook ribs in, with the ribs lined up vertically, all in a row), it would be wheeled into the autoclave (which was literally--and intentionally--large enough to cook a B-1 fuselage in) and cooked at a very high temp (can't remember for the life of me what that was) and quite a few atmospheres.
After that, they would move to the trim shop, where all of the titanium tabs (used for bolting in place) would be trimmed off, and at that point, I believe, they would be shipped to another Grumman plant, for final fabrication and finish. Then to the assembly plant (in Bethpage, I think) to finally meet their chosen Tomcat.
Interestingly, Boron tape is a very tough material to work with. It's very brittle and had the tendency to splinter off tiny little pieces, about as fine as a human hair and of variable length. These pieces were just visible to the human eye on the work surface and had non-intuitive, high tensile strength.
At least once a summer, someone would see one of these fragments, casually reach over to brush it off the work surface, and end up with a boron splinter stuck all the way thru their hand. This required immediate attention in the infirmary, since, if the splinter broke off, you ended up with boron stuck in your dang hand.
Good times . . . good times . . .