Builder's Log | Andrew's RV-7 Build Log

VS Skin Riveting, Part Deux

February 12, 2010

I’m writing this on Monday for Friday night’s work, so we’ll see how much I can remember.

After a couple minutes of clecoing on the right side of the VS skin, I got started riveting. First, I set every other rivet along the VS-702 front spar and the VS-707 middle rib.

Left skin on the bottom, right skin on the top. That crazy long cleco keeps sneaking into the pictures.

After rivting the front spar and ribs to the skin, here’s an interior picture.

Lower interior of the vertical stabilizer.

Here’s a picture of my “every-other-rivet” style. It works well.

Ready for the remaining rivets.

There are 39 rivets (not counting the tip and root ribs) for the front spar and middle ribs. After setting these 39, I’m ready to pull off the blue vinyl from the interior.

Starting to look pretty. So is your face.

Another rivet picture. (I’m not sure I got these in the correct order…Hmm.)

VS shop heads.

More rivets.

More shop heads.

<sigh>

<yawn>

Had enough yet?

Even more shop heads.

Alright, now I get to start removing the blue vinyl. This is where the gravy is. After all that prep work and riveting, you get to remove the vinyl to reveal a beautiful shine on the inside. I can’t wait to do this on the exterior skin (just before polishing). Flash on for visibility.

Starting to remove the blue vinyl.

I left the flash on for this one so you could see inside.

Inside the lower bay of the VS.

And the upper bay.

Upper bay of the VS.

After removing all of the vinyl, I moved on to riveting the tip (VS-706) and root ribs (VS-704 and VS-705) to the skin. All was going well, until I got the front of the root rib.

Anyway, for some reason the skin wasn’t sitting well on the rib. I later determined it wasn’t interference, just the natural curve of the rib.

The lower right side of the VS skin wasn't sitting very well on the root rib.

My solution? Use a tape-covered clamp to squeeze them together.

Alright, let's set this rivet.

That did the trick. Who’s next?

Looks perfect now.

Here I am riveting some of the rest of the root rib. I was very careful to not rivet the 6 holes on each side the instructions tell you to leave open for the empennage fairing. I probably won’t use all 6, but I can always squeeze these later, so why close any metaphorical doors?

In the middle of squeezing the root rib.

Here’s the VS (except the rear spar) all riveted together. Notice the 6 clecos in the holes to leave open.

Where's that rear spar?

I inserted the rear spar and started setting rivets. All was going perfectly, until I realized that most of the rivets couldn’t be set because of conflicting shop heads on the rear spar. I had tried two rivets that were close to having enough clearance, and I messed both of the shop heads up. Here’s one.

Bad rivet shop head there in the middle. Obviously.

And here’s the other.

Another bad shop head there on the left. See the cleco in the middle of the picture. The rivet that will go in that hole doesn't have a lot of room to be bucked.

I gave up on any other rivets that would be close with the squeezer. I’ve been doing so well recently with the gun and bucking bar, that I’ll just wait till I can make loud noises and set them with the gun.

Where I left off for today. I'll figure out how to set the remaining rear spar to skin rivets sometime next week.

One and a half hours today. 135 rivets set; some shot, some squeezed. Only a few will have to be drilled out later. Good night tonight. Hopefully next week, the dogs will get some directional stability.

Prev | Next

Leave a Comment » | Empennage | Tagged: Buck, Devinyl, Front spar, Ginger, Jack, Rear spar, Ribs, Riveting, shoot, skeleton, skin, So is your face, spar, Squeeze | Permalink
Posted by Andrew

VS Skin Riveting

February 10, 2010

Prev | Next

After 9 days of not working on the airplane, I finally made it out to the garage. In all fairness, though, I spent all last week working out hard, and preparing for a bachelor party at Snowshoe. West Virginia, right? Yup. It was actually pretty cool there. It was in the midst of the big blizzard that bent the east coast over last week, so Showshoe got somewhere around 20 inches of snow. Legend…wait for it…dary.

Anyway, I had previously drilled out the front spar(VS-702) to tip rib (VS-706) rivets, so here are the replacements. The one on the left doesn’t look all that good, but this is my third try, and I think I am going to leave good enough alone.

Front spar to tip rib rivets. Left one sucks, but I'm not going to make it any worse.

Then, I reset the VS-704 root rib to front spar rivets. I set the middle one fine, then messed up the outer two. Drill out, and reset them just fine on the second try.

Looking good from this side.

Here’s a shot of the shop heads for those three rivets.

Here are the shop heads for those three. Not too bad.

Next, the instructions tell you to cleco on the skin and start riveting. Here’s a shot of me getting ready to rivet.

Start from the middle of the front spar and work outboard, then back to the start and work inboard. Then, rivet along the middle rib aft.

Here’s a shot of some shop heads. You’ll have to click on the picture to see them.

Nice looking shop heads. You can also see my interior skin masking practice. Looks good, doesn't it?

More shop heads.

Another shot of the shop heads for VS-702 front spar and VS-707 middle rib.

And one more…

Once I get the other side of the skin riveted, I can take off the blue vinyl from the inside of the skins.

After riveting one side of the skin, I had to head inside to watch UNC play Dook. (Yes, that is how you spell Dook.)

Starting to look like something that could fly.

One hour today. I drilled out 3 rivets , set 5 rivets on the skeleton and 39 on the left VS skin. 44 total. Booyah.

Prev | Next

Leave a Comment » | Empennage | Tagged: Devinyl, Empennage, Front spar, Riveting, skeleton, skin, spar, VS | Permalink
Posted by Andrew

VS Rear Spar Work

February 1, 2010

Prev | Next

After the big snow storm this weekend, work was delayed this morning until 10:30am. That gave me a few extra hours to recover from my ski trip yesterday. Maybe I’ll post a couple pictures later.

Also, I snuck in an hour on the vertical tail this morning after a quick workout.

First thing, I drilled out the 5 poorly set rivets from Saturday, and ended up shooting 67 rivets in today.

Here I am setting some universal rivets.

Me using the tape trick even on universal rivets.

Here are all of the lower vertical rear spar flush rivets.

Sorry for the weird angle. Here are the flush rivets on the forward side of the lower vertical rear spar.

About 4 of these didn’t sit completely flush after backriveting, so I’ll have to drill them out. I think it it because I am using some steel bar stock as a backriveting plate instead of a true backriveting plate. Also, my 12″ double offset backriveting set sucked. I think it is too long to really transfer the force. I swtiched to a shorter and it worked great.

One hour today. Set 67 rivets, drilled out 5 from the other day.

Prev | Next

Leave a Comment » | Empennage | Tagged: Backriveting, Empennage, Rear spar, Riveting | Permalink
Posted by Andrew

Skin Dimpling, Edge Finishing, Priming, Riveting

January 30, 2010

Prev | Next

I worked in sections today.

There was a big storm here last night, (and all of today), but I’ve learned that cleaning off the driveway is a lot easier if you do it when it is 3″ two times instead of once after 6″ has accumulated. Here’s what I woke up to this morning.

Snow!

Here’s after about an hour of shoveling. Good workout.

Coming down fast, but at least I cleared off the first 6".

Then, I got the c-frame out and finished the VS skin dimpling. I replaced the blue tape on the male die, and got almost no circles.

Simple but effective dimpling setup.

Then I countersunk all of the lower forward spar reinforcement holes from the plans. I haven’t used the countersink since I had to countersink HS-710 and HS-714 to accept a #30 dimple, so the countersink cage was already set up. All I had to do was verify in a piece of scrap. Yup. It’s perfect.

Beautiful countersinking.

Then, I cleaned and primed one interior side of the vertical skin, then the other. Here’s the first side drying.

Hurry up and wait to dry.

After finishing the second side and letting it dry, I pulled the forward section of vinyl off of the interior side of the skin. During assembly, no bucking bars will be needed in there, so there is no risk of scratching. Then I finished edge finishing the ribs, spars, and rear spar reinforcement, and primed each one. I didn’t prime them sitting perfectly horizontal, so I got some runs and some nastiness; some of them ended up getting touched up, and some got a second coat. After they were all dry, I cleco those bad boys together in preparation for riveting.

Skeleton and rear spar taking shape.

I started with the skeleton, middle rib. Here’s my first VS rivet.

First VS rivet.

Then, I moved to the tip. See the upper rivet? The skins are sitting flush, this will have to be drilled out.

Ahhh! I suck at riveting.

And the lower rivet there started to bend over. I’ll have to drill out both rivets.

Two rivets to be drilled out.

Back to the middle rib, two more perfect rivets.

There are pretty good. I need to make sure that bottom one is driven enough.

See the fourth rivet from the right? Started to bend over, so I’m going to drill it out. Also, I’m going to put the shop heads on the thicker material here, also, they’ll be easier to inspect.

Uh oh. See the third rivet from the right? I was supposed to wait and rivet this with the skeleton. Slow down and follow the directions!

Two more rivets to be drilled out.

But I was feeling good about squeezing, so I kept going. Until these 4 rivets. Terrible…they all started to bend over. I think my rivet squeezer sucks. I have to squeeze really hard and it it tough to keep everything aligned. I think after I drill these out I am going to shoot and buck these.

4 bad rivets to be drilled out.

At this point, I had to walk away, I was tired, frustrated, and not making any progress. Ugh.

So far, 3.5 hours. I set some rivets today, but I’m not going to count any of them until I drill them out. I’ll update the rivet count later.

Prev | Next

Leave a Comment » | Empennage | Tagged: C-frame, Dimpling, Front spar, Priming, Rear spar, Ribs, Riveting, Scotchbrite, scuff, skeleton, skin, spar, Vinyl | Permalink
Posted by Andrew

VS skin Deburring and Dimpling

January 29, 2010

Prev | Next

Today, I didn’t make it outside until late, so I didn’t get a lot of work done. Here’s me starting on deburring the skin. Yes, I am using the Van’s recommended “spin a drill bit in your fingers” method. It works for me.

Action shot of me deburring.

An example of a deburred hole. The hole on the right is deburred. There is a very small chamfer on it from the oversized drill bit. It’s easier to see because it’s catching the light from above.

Deburred hole there on the right.

After deburring, I scuffed up the interior of the skin with a maroon scotchbrite pad.

Scuffed, ready to dimple.

Because it was so late, I didn’t want to break out the c-frame. I grabbed the hand squeezer and finished what I could reach.

These are regular (not "tank") dimples. No circles when you use the blue tape trick.

And here’s the vertical stabilizer skin, deburred and dimpled around the perimeter. When sound level permits, I’ll get the c-frame out and dimple the remaining holes.

Almost done with the skin.

I counted 104 holes per side for deburring. That’s 208 holes, 416 deburring operations needed. I usually spin the bit 4 times, which makes 1664 spins of the drill bit. Oww…

1.0 hour closer to being done.

Prev | Next

Leave a Comment » | Empennage | Tagged: C-frame, Deburring, Dimpling, Empennage, scuff, skin, Squeeze, VS | Permalink
Posted by Andrew

More VS work

January 26, 2010

Prev | Next

Last night I spent a little bit of time rearrange (cleaning) out the workshop. Now, I’ve got a little more room to maneuver. (Mostly, I just moved my second workbench a little left, and moved the shop vac over by the compressor, now the walkway to get into my workshop area is a little more open.)

Slightly different layout for the workshop. I like this.

Tonight, I started by disassembling the vertical to start the deburring, dimpling, countersinking, cleaning, priming, and then reassembly dance. Here I am set up in front of the UNC game for some deburring.

Ready to deburr some holes. Don't judge me for drinking white. We had red snapper for dinner.

After what seemed like a thousand holes to deburr, I broke out the 3/32″ tank dimple dies and the 1/8″ regular dimple dies (for the rear spar) and got ready to dimple. Dimpling is much easier than deburring, and fun, too. I know deburring is important, but I feel like I’ve made progress after dimpling.

Ready to dimple.

Then, I started dimpling the ribs and spars. Here are the 3/32″ tank dies in action.

3/32" tank dies in action.

Here I am using the 1/8″ regular (shallower) dimple dies on the rear spar. I had to triple check both the holes and the direction before proceeding. This is correct, I think. (Flush rivets on the forward side of the spar.)

1/8" dimples on the rear spar. These are my first 1/8" dimples.

After finishing dimpling, I grabbed the skin and brought it inside to devinyl. Devinyling is a lot easier indoors, where the vinyl is room temperature. I tried pulling off the horizontal stabilizer vinyl in the garage when it was near freezing, and it kept tearing and was very stiff.

Waiting for the soldering iron to heat up.

After using the soldering iron and a wooden straight edge (the metal straight edge carries heat away too quickly, and you don’t get a melt line), I got to pull off the vinyl. For some odd reason, I find devinyling very cathartic. I love pulling off the blue to see the shiny aluminum underneath.

Pulling off the vinyl on the inside of the skin.

Ready to pull off the blue vinyl on the exterior of the skin.

Ready to devinyl the outside of the skin.

And finally, the vertical stabilizer skin devinyled (and everything carried back out into the garage).

Pretty skin. Also, that's me in the reflection.

Here are the ribs and spars all deburred and dimpled. (I still have to countersink the front side of the VS-803PP.)

Ribs and spars deburred and dimpled.

Next up, countersinking the rear spar reinforcement then deburring, dimpling, and scuffing the skin. Then priming, then I get to put this sucker together.

I can’t believe how much faster the vertical is than the horizontal. Part of it is the learning curve, but I think they should have you start with the vertical. Much easier, in my opinion.

Prev | Next

Leave a Comment » | Empennage | Tagged: cleco, Deburring, Devinyl, Dimpling, drill bit, Empennage, Front spar, Rear spar, Ribs, scuff, Vinyl, VS | Permalink
Posted by Andrew

Matchdrilled Right Side of Vertical

January 25, 2010

Prev | Next

No pictures tonight.

I broke out the cordless drill (quieter than the air drill) and finished matchdrilling the right side of the vertical stabilizer.

Same routine. Drill every other hole, mark with a dry-erase marker, move clecos, drill remaining holes. Because the root forward rib gave me a little trouble when clecoing during initial assembly, I had 100% clecoed it. For this area, I removed one cleco, matchdrilled, then replaced the cleco. I just didn’t want it to move around on me at all.

Since I forgot to take a picture, here’s another picture of Jack and Ginger.

Ginger all up in your business, Jack in the background.

Half an hour. Not bad for a night I wasn’t planning on working on the airplane.

Prev | Next

Leave a Comment » | Empennage | Tagged: drill bit, Empennage, Ginger, Jack, Match-drilling, skeleton, skin, spar, VS | Permalink
Posted by Andrew

VS Assembly and Matchdrilling

January 24, 2010

Prev | Next

First thing after breakfast, I snagged the two VS spars and the spar reinforcement and headed into the kitchen to finish some surface prep. After about an hour, I had all three pieces scuffed up, cleaned, and back outside. Here is a shot during scuffing. You can see the top half has been scotchbrited and the bottom half is the raw part after removing the blue vinyl.

You can even see my hand and the camera in the bottom half.

Here’s the spar reinforcement before finishing.

Rear spar reinforcement.

All three after scuffing. (Along with the ribs from last night.)

Looking good.

Then, I bent the rib flanges to exactly 90 degrees using my new hand seamers, and fluted the ribs.

Fluted, ready for assembly.

I started clecoing the rear spar doubler to the rear spar, and then realized they want you to put the hinge brackets in now. I quickly located VS-410PP, VS-411PP, and VS-412PP, and got the Goo Gone out to help pull these stickers off.

These part number stickers are a pain in the butt to get off cleanly.

While I waited for the Goo Gone to do its magic, I decided to start clecoing the front spar and ribs together. You can also see the rear spar and rear spar reinforcement in the upper left corner of this picture.

Tip rib attached.

Then, I clecoed in the rear spar. Here, you can also see the hinge brackets waiting for the Goo Gone.

Middle rib attached.

Finally, I clecoed in the root ribs (fore and aft).

Root ribs attached.

Then, I cleaned off the hinge brackets, got them clecoed to the rear spar, and clecoed the rear spar to the front spar and ribs.

Looks like an airplane again.

I followed Mike Bullock’s advice and clamped the rear spar to a couple of 2x4s. This let me matchdrill the rear spar vertically, which helps a lot with getting a perfectly straight hole.

Rudimentary VS jig for matcdrilling the rear spar.

Here’s my process. Cleco every other hole, match drill, mark the drilled hole with a dry-erase dot, move the clecos, repeat. Here, you can see my dots.

Dry-erase dots help me know which holes I've drilled.

After finishing up the ones you can reach from the aft side of the rear spar, I flipped the whole assembly over and match-drilled the two remaining holes (that aren’t drilled in the upper half of the lower set of hinge brackets).

12" bit doing its thing...

Next, we get to cleco on the skin, wuhoo!

It looks like another airplane part.

Then, time to matchdrill the skin to the spars and ribs. Same process here. Cleco every other hole, drill, mark dots, move clecos, repeat.

Match-drilling the skin.

Here, you can see that I am in the middle of moving clecos. The one in the center of the picture gets moved one left (into the marked, already drilled hole), then the one to the left of that gets moved one left, and so on.

Example of brand new cleco on the left, and two used clecos in the middle. Eh, they work just fine, they're just not as pretty.

I got the left side of the vertical match-drilled, then flipped it over, took this picture, and then headed inside.

Ready for the second side of match-drilling. Maybe later tonight or tomorrow.

3.0 solid hours today. Good work all around.

Prev | Next

Leave a Comment » | Empennage | Tagged: cleco, Empennage, fluting, Front spar, Match-drilling, Rear spar, Ribs, Scotchbrite, scuff, skeleton, skin, spar, VS | Permalink
Posted by Andrew

Edge and Surface prep for VS Skeleton

January 23, 2010

Prev | Next

Time to get started on the vertical. Drawing 6.

Time to start on the vertical stabilizer.

After finishing the Empennage Hardware Inventory today, I got started on edge and surface prep on the VS ribs and spars. Here are the components for the VS skeleton. I like to scuff up the surfaces and finish the edges before initial assembly. This prevents scratching, and frankly makes the parts look better in the pictures.

VS skeleton components.

After removing the blue vinyl on the rear spar, front spar, and reinforcement piece, I used my Permagrit block to remove all of the burrs from the spars and ribs. Then, I used my edge deburring tool and a scothbrite pad to finish the edges on the spars.

After that, I took the 4 VS ribs into the kitchen and used a soapy scotchbrite pad to scuff them up. Here’s one before rinsing.

So fresh and so clean, clean.

Here are all four after edge finishing and scuffing.

Scuffed up and looking ready to assemble for match-drilling.

Next up, fluting the ribs and scotchbriting the spars and reinforcement piece before assembling for match-drilling.

An hour and a half. Not bad.

Prev | Next

Leave a Comment » | Empennage | Tagged: Devinyl, edges, Empennage, Scotchbrite, scuff, skeleton, spar, VS | Permalink
Posted by Andrew

Empennage Hardware Inventory, Tools

January 23, 2010

Prev | Next

After a quick morning stop to Harbor Freight for the pictured stuff below and NAPA for two more bottles of self-etching primer, I got home and decided to finish inventorying the empennage hardware.

$24 shopping spree!

I found a coupon in Men’s Journal (or Men’s Health, I can’t remember) for a whole bunch of stuff from Harbor Freight. One of the coupons was for $1.99 12″ clamp, and the other was for a FREE flashlight. (3.5 inch 8 LED flashlight). I was surprised to get it home and discover it already had batteries in it.

Holy crap, this FREE flashlight is bright.

Also, I found some 8 inch welding pliers for $4.99. After some edge finishing and smoothing of the interior surface, these should end up being nice hand seamers, for $15 less than the cheapest aircraft tool company.

"Welding Pliers" + smooth surfaces and edges = Hand Seamers

Then, I used a 15% off coupon and a 20% off coupon for each of these two, usually $9.99 each. I love these things, we use them at work for all the aircraft hardware. Highly recommended.

19 Piece storage containers.

Most of the hour was spent taking the empennage hardware out of the bags. The bags worked just fine for me, especially since I kept the hardware inventory sheet handy, but this will work even better, and really only cost me about $17.