So last night, I forgot to tell you about deburring and dimpling the rest of the ribs before clecoing the skins on. I don’t know why I forgot, or think it’s important, but I did.
Okay, tonight, I headed out to the garage after bedtime because I am too excited to get going on these top skins.
What can I do quietly? Maybe squeeze some of the more accessible rivets.
Here's the guide for wing skin riveting.
And the legend…
It's basically like paint by numbers, but for nerdy pilots.
So, I broke out the squeezer, sat down with some music, some rivets (of various sizes per above) and my cleco pliers and started in on it.
Here’s the first top skin rivet.
First top skin rivet!
The first three! (I'm such a dork.)
It turns out you can reach the bottom (rear spar) to skin rivets, and the inboard edge. I needed a closer look at the inboard edge part to make sure I didn’t rivet any of the holes that are supposed to be left open for the wing root.
DON'T RIVET THESES HOLES!
A gratuitous shop head picture.
Nice, Nice, Nice, Nice, Nice, Nice, Nice.
After 140 squeezes (I lie, some of them were underdriven, so I squeezed them a little more), I had the whole rear spar (except a few) and the whole inboard edge (except a few).
In case you don't like this picture...
I took this one too.
I don’t know why I took both those pictures. The only two differences…I put the rear spar support back up (for kicks) and didn’t bend down as far for the picture. I think I’m tired.
I’m wrangling up my first riveting partner for some more skin riveting this weekend.
1.0 hour. 140 perfectly squeezed rivets. Boo. Yeah.
Andrew's RV-7 Build Log 