Well, instead of working on the two end ribs, I decided to bite the bullet and get started on the interior ribs. First step was to remove the target rib (I’m choosing #6 as the first one), get the skin and rib perfectly clean, and get the proseal ready.
Here’s the skin, ready to receive its first rib.
I left the blue vinyl on because it's been good mess control for me. YMMV.
After mixing 1.0 oz of white stuff with 0.1 oz black stuff, you get some goopy grey stuff!
All buttered up, ready to go in the skin.
Okay, this paragraph represents about 45 minutes worth of work with gloves on, and therefore no pictures. I clecoed the rib in, then removed a cleco, inserted a clean (MEK soaked) rivet, covered it in tape, then riveted.
This is the bottom of the tank after getting all of those shot and bucked.
You can see the squeezeout, and I'm trying to leave it alone until later.
Repeat that for the top, except I had one rivet sitting proud.
Bummer.
After drilling out carefully, finding the shop head in the tank, and cleaning up again, I came out with this:
All fixed..
Nice.
Here’s a shot of my fillets (but no rivet encapsulation yet). I have to get a syringe out for that, and I don’t want to waste a syringe unless I know I can do a few ribs at a time. I may just wait until I can do all the ribs at once.
From the right...
From the left...
And, during final cleanup of my tools tonight,
All gone.
1.0 hour, 34 rivets, 1 SUCCESSFULLY drilled out.
Andrew's RV-7 Build Log 