Well, the guilt of not working on the airplane very much recently finally got to me and I had to do something.
As it turns out, I got the rest of the left aileron completely deburred, dimpled, edge finished, and scuffed, which means next session will be prep for priming and final assembly after that.
Here’s a shot of the aileron main skin, after deburring, scuffing, and dimpling.
Nice dimples, right?
Not sure why I took this shot, but I had to break into my next pack of maroon scotchbrite. I cut them up into ~3 inch squares to work with.
This is good stuff. I wonder how much I've bought so far.
Then, I repeated the process on the spar, and finally the leading edge skin. In addition to the fingerprints, I also used my edge-forming tool to make a slight bend in the edge.
This helps the skin lay (lie?) flat against the other skin. You’ll see.
Sorry for the bad picture, but it's hard to get a good angle where you can actually see the bend.
Here’s the edge forming tool.
It might be time for new wheels. I think these are worn out.
After the edge was formed, I put the leading edge skin up on my bending brace because it is a good place to hold it, and went down the row with the hand squeezer with some dimple dies.
Action shot!
Halfway through, I noticed my blue-tape-on-the-die was wearing out, so I removed it.
Of course, I tried a few dimples again without replacing the tape, and I got circles.
Duh.
So, I replaced the tape, and got nice dimples again.
Circles on the left, no circles on the right.
Here's a new piece of tape. No more circles.
1.5 hours. Next up: cleaning, priming, and final assembly!
Andrew's RV-7 Build Log 