I didn’t get in a lot of work today, but an hour on the trailing edge isn’t too shabby.
First thing, unpack the Lowes bounty. I picked up a 6′ piece of aluminum angle (for the trailing edge work) a long (36″) backriveting plate, a 36″ 3/4″ diameter steel stake for leading edge rolling, and a smaller backriveting plate that I will be returning (picked that one up before finding the longer one).
Lowes bounty.
I grabbed the aluminum angle, and drilled both sides to the dirtier side of my MDF toolbench.
The cleco on either end will help it stay put.
Then I used the trailing edge (pre countersunk) to drill the trailing edge hole pattern in the aluminum angle.
I lined up the trailing edge with the aft edge of the angle so I could ensure things were straight both left and right and forward and aft.
Here’s the angle after being Matchdrilled.
Let's do it.
Next up, countersinking the trailing edge wedge to accept the dimple of the skins. I grabbed a piece of stiffener (.016″) and used my standard dimple dies as a test piece. First, I measured the very outside diameter of the dimple.
0.2165"
Then, I conservatively deepened a countersunk hole in the trailing edge until it reached 0.2165″
Here's .187.
A little deeper...there we go.
After finishing both sides with this depth, I clecoed the skin together. Hmm, This doesn’t look that good.
There's a pretty big gap in some places.
I was frustrated this didn’t work out perfectly and I had some socializing to do, so I walked away. I’ll come back to this tomorrow.
Andrew's RV-7 Build Log 