Started Banging Rivets on the Right Leading Edge

April 22, 2011

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OH MY GOSH!

ANDREW’S

BUILDING AGAIN!

Well, even though my last post said I was getting back into the mood of airplane building, it’s been almost a MONTH since I spent time on the project.

Yikes.

Anyway, I had a day off today, and I managed to spend a couple hours in the airplane factory.

Let’s see if I remember how to take and post picture.

After a little garage cleanup, I got the right leading edge out and got back to deburring all of the holes. I think deburring took about 30 minutes.

My hand hurt after deburring all of these. I need to deburr more often.

Once done, I took the cradles off the skin and opened her up to do some scuffing.

I haven't totally finished the leading edge light installation, but I can do that after the ribs are installed.

Then, I broke out the c-frame and started dimpling. This actually takes awhile, because you have to be careful not to punch any extra holes in the skin.

Even though I can reach these dimples with my squeezer, I think you get better, crisper dimples from the c-frame.

Here's me doing the forward-most hole in the top of the leading edge skin.

AHHHHHHHH!

THE DREADED

FIGURE-8!

Well, after 242 hours, and thousands of dimpled holes, I finally joined the club.

To tell you the truth, it’s really not that noticeable, except for the fact that it is on the top of the wing (AND YOU’LL ALL NOTICE IT)!

Anyway, I used some flat sets and pounded it flat, then filed it down a little, and dimpled the primary hole.

Here's the extra dimple pounded flat.

And the orginal hole dimpled. still needs a little filing here.

I could throw a fit and order a new leading edge from Van’s, or I could just build on, and cover this with filler and paint.

(I don’t think I can polish the wings anymore.)

Well, in the interest of building on, I decided to do a little riveting today. I had a couple ribs prepped (my legend: R2 and R3), so I got them prepped, primed, and clecoed in place. (Making sure to cleco one rib on either side of those so the leading edge was perfectly straight.

Here are the ribs clecoed in place.

Of course, I use my normal tape-over-each-rivet-head trick to minimize scratches, dings, and marring.

I shot and bucked every other one (no mistakes) and then replaced the clecoes with rivets, moved the tape over, and finished the row.

(Needless to say, I started with the bottom of the leading edge, so any mistakes due to out-of-practice riveting wouldn’t be so obvious.)

Gratuitous shop head shot on the lower surface of the first rib.

Gratuitous shop head shot on the lower surface of the second rib.

Wash. Rinse. Repeat. (Crap, I meant flip, cleco, rivet, repeat.)

Gratuitous shop head shot on the upper surface of the first rib.

Gratuitous shop head shot on the upper surface of the second rib.

Umm, did we not have enough shop head shots today?

Andrew, STOP TAKING PICTURE OF SHOP HEADS.

Here’s the “club” rivet. I think I’m going to leave it like this, and just watch it for cracks, but someone will probably tell me I need to drill this out and replace it with some other solution. We’ll see.

(big. depressed. sigh.)

Seriously, I need to control myself with this camera.

Oh, and I was having trouble counting rivets today, which was weird.

So I just started writing them down. Can you guys check my math?

3 hours, 58 rivets, 1 figure-8. Boo.

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Posted by Andrew

Started Prepping Right Leading Edge

March 25, 2011

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Jeesh, I can’t seem to get a minute away from our third puppy to head outside and do any work on the airplane.

Tonight, finally, during halftime (go UNC!) and just after the game (wuhoo UNC!), I managed to go outside and do a couple things.

I didn’t want to do anything major; I really just wanted to go out there and get back up to speed. I’m kind of in the middle of rib prep on the leading edge, so I disassembled a few of the leading edge ribs and worked on what I labelled R3, or the third rib from the inboard side.

After deburring (back up, looks like I forgot to matchdrill some of the holes….sigh). Okay, after drilling, deburring, edge finishing, and scuffing, I now I have two right leading edge ribs ready for primer.

R2 and R3 (my numbering) ready for primer.

After pulling out the rest of the ribs (including the two outboard-ish ribs shown below), I went ahead and drilled pilot holes for the nutplate holes that are needed for the leading edge landing light installations. I had previously marked these while they were assembled with the leading edge using the provided template.

The two outboard ribs, now with pilot holes drilled for the bracket (the two small holes just above the lightening hole).

So here’s my thought. I really hate rib prep, so I’m basically going to do one at a time, then get it installed in the leading edge. To do that, I’ll need to prep (deburr, dimple) and prime the appropriate parts of the leading edge, and prep one additional rib. Generally, you want the surrounding structure in place for whatever you are riveting. Hence the need for the “next” rib to be clecoed in place while you are riveting a particular rib. If you don’t have the next one in place (have everything perfectly aligned), then the final structure may not be aligned. Make sense? No? Oh well.

So, I put the leading edge in my cradles and got to work with deburring. I got all the exterior holes deburred, did some edge-finishing with my permagrit block and my edge deburring tool and a scotchbrite pad, then started deburring the interior before my hand got tired.

Leading edge during some prep.

Oh, and out of laziness, I screwed the right tank loosely into position instead of taking it back upstairs. I think it’s going to be awhile before I get back to working on it.

It kind of has a funny shape with no ribs in it.

It was a short night, but got me back into the mood, so I’ll call it a success.

1 hour.

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Posted by Andrew

Some Right Leading Edge Work

March 13, 2011

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Wow, I can’t believe it’s been two weeks since my last work on the airplane.

Taking care of this little puppy (trying to find him a home) has taken its toll on our schedules and ability to sleep at night. Also, I’ve been busy at work logging time in something a little bigger than an RV.

Anyway, back to building.

I spent a few minutes taking some time to get reoriented. I couldn’t decide whether to work on the leading edge light or start working on ribs. The plan is to get the right leading edge assembled, then get back to prep on the left wing to catch it up.

I spent some time deburring, dimpling, and scuffing the joint plate, then focused on the inboard leading edge rib.

Crap. These holes are too close to the web.

Crap, I didn’t have it positioned properly when drilling.

There's no way I'm going to be able to dimple these holes.

The most important part of this picture is the sad face.

Time to order another part (along with rudder skins, maybe.)

After wiping the tears off of my cheeks, I moved on to the leading edge light hole. I knew over the last few weeks I needed to figure out a way to clean up the leading edge landing light holes, so I went to Northern Tool and bought a $25 angle die-grinder and a few accoutrements to go with it.

Tools!

Looks fancy.

I plugged it in and gave it a go, and was very happy with the die grinder, but it wasn’t what I was looking for for the leading edge holes.

I broke out the jigsaw (gasp!) and put a fine tooth metal cutting blade in.

Carefully, I enlarged the leading edge hole right on the line, and spent a few minutes cleaning up the cut. It needs some more work, but it’s okay for now. This was a lot faster than trying to do it with a file.

Right leading edge after cleaning up my jigsaw enlargement.

Finally, I pulled out one of the other leading edge ribs and prepped it (deburr holes and edges, dimple, scuff, etc.)

For the dimpling step, the nose of my economy squeezer sticks out a little further than the female die, so I used the regular grinder side of my bench grinder and ground it down a little.

Now it won't scratch the web of the ribs as I dimple.

Here's one leading edge rib prepped.

I still have a few (a lot!) more to do (including some nutplate attachments for the outboard two ribs for the light bracket), but then I’ll get the leading edge prepped and maybe get one of the big pieces put together. That will make me happy.

I’m going to work over the next few weeks to put in some more regular airplane hours. I need to keep moving if I’m ever going to get it done.

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Posted by Andrew

Riveted the Right Rear Spar to the Main Ribs

January 23, 2011

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Well, today was a crappy day. I had mucho problems with riveting the right rear spar to the main ribs.

I’ll walk you through what happened.

I started with the inboard side of the spar. The plans call for an AN470AD4-8 rivet. As you can see below, this is a little for a good shop head.

...AD4-8.

Here's an ...AD4-9 rivet. This looks better.

After some gymnastics with my good squeezer, which only has a 4″ no-hole yoke on it, I realized that I needed the holed yoke, and therefore needed to use my economy squeezer. Bummer.

(Back in the empennage, I stopped squeezing AD4 rivets altogether because I kept messing them up; the economy squeezer just didn’t have enough oompf.)

Anyway, I managed the wingwalk rivets with the smaller squeezer. Here’s 9 rivets squeezed.

I couldn't reach the top-most rivet in 3 of the 4 wingwalk ribs. (The other open hole in each of the rib attach points needs to wait for the flap brace.)

I moved my way outboard from there, two rivets in each rib.

Halfway there, I bent over both of the rivets in the aileron pushtube doubler area, and drilled both of those rivets out. Then, the aileron gap seal switches “open” rivets (compared to the flap brace) so of course I set a two rivets there that had to be drilled out.

When I got to the end, I noticed things weren’t lining up very well.

Duh. Forgot to dimple the aft side of the outboard rib.

That's better.

I still couldn’t reach the one rivet (shown on the left here), but I got the other 3 set properly.

The apparent gap between the two flanges isn't really a gap, its just the shadow.

Let me bring you back to the very first rivet I set. The camera is upside down here (so the part is right side up).

The upper, leftmost rivet bent over (it was the first one I set with the economy squeezer). After drilling out, the hole was englarged.

With only slightly enlarged holes, sometimes you can just squeeze another rivet (a little longer this time) and it will expand to fill the hole nicely.

This is after setting another rivet.

This one did not properly expand, and by the time the shop head was formed, it kind of formed in the hole.

Hmm. I know this is a critical piece, so I’m going to have to call Van’s and ask them what the best course of action here is.

I’m hoping I can step up to a AN470AD5-9 rivets, but I’ll need to drill the rivet and hole out to 5/32″ and I’m worried about edge-distance in the up direction.

We’ll see what the guys at Van’s have to say.

January 31st update: Ken S at Van’s wrote back.

A 5 rivet should work ok. If you can fill the hole with the original rivet, that’s ok too –even with
a slightly undersize head. Just be sure that the rivet engages the entire circumference of the
hole.

Alright. I’ll have to add AN470AD5- rivets to my next order from Van’s or Aircraft Spruce. In the meantime, I’m going to keep working on other stuff.

U-G-L-Y, you don't have no alibi, you ugly! {clap, clap} You ugly!

1.5 hours and 28 stupid rivets set (my arms are tired from the economy squeezer); 8 of those drilled out.

I’m going to have to buy a new yoke ($$$) and probably do some surgery on the offending rivet in the last picture.

I’m stopping this post and starting another one (click next below) because I moved on to the skins. I really needed to end on a good note today, and the skins actually did the trick.

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Prepped and Primed First Wing Rib

January 6, 2011

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Well, since my tool order from Cleveland finally showed up, I decided it was time to jump into rib prep full speed ahead. Because I have already finished most of the edges, fluted and bent the flanges to 90°, I really just needed to prep the lightening holes (which I couldn’t get to with the 6″ scotchbrite wheel) and use some emery cloth to get the smaller crevices.

Here’s the tool order. Along with 75 1/8″ clecos, I got 100 more 3/32″ clecos, a 2″ scothbrite wheel, the mandrel for that wheel, and some #41 and #19 drill bits.

I love new, shiny clecos.

I put a washer on the top of the mandrel and then screwed down the wheel.

Crap, not enough threads.

Took it apart, removed the upper washer, then assembled it again.

I'm showing one thread, but that's okay.

In order to start taking apart the wing to get at the ribs for prepping and priming, I needed to unjack the rear spar, which means I have to remove the leading edges, which are clecoed to the main spar before allowing the weight of the wing to bend everything.

Here are the leading edges on the workbench.

I guess I snapped a picture of my 320 grit emery cloth. (This isn’t really cloth, it’s more of belt-sanding sandpaper. It works, though.)

320 grit from NAPA.

I chucked the 2″ wheel in the drill press and started cutting grooves in it (with the ribs I was deburring).

That groove is from one rib's lightening holes. I'm going to need more scotchbrite wheels.

After completely edge-finishing the rib, including flossing the little crevices with the emory cloth, I dimpled the one hole in the rib that is underneath the rear spar flange, which also needs to be dimpled to accept a dimple in the skin. Here’s the right rear spar, lower flange hole that I dimpled.

Dimple!

Then, I primed the rib.

Still wet from primer...

The next morning, it was dry, and I snapped another picture.

Nice...

This took me about an hour, but I spent a good 20 minutes getting organized first. I won’t prime each rib individually, but I’ll probably do them in groups of 5 or so to break up the monotany. Tthere are 28 total main ribs…I’m not even going to think about the leading edge and tank ribs yet).

That one rib looks good, though. I need to think about ordering some snap-bushings for the holes in the forward edge.

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Stall Warning Access Panel Work

January 4, 2011

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Well, I was able to spend a short half hour in the garage tonight. Last time, I ended up working on the access panel for the stall warning vane. I figured getting that prepped, primed, and nutplated would be a nice short task completion.

Here's the doubler, dimpled (for #6 screws) and scuffed after running the edges through the scotchbrite wheel.

I finished the edges of the cover, too, and dimpled for the #6 screws. The other side of this plate is devinyled and scuffed, but I’m leaving the vinyl on this (the potentially polishable) side.

Ready for priming.

See, I told you the other side was scuffed.

Primed!

While the primer was drying, I did a little edge finishing of the stall warning vane mini-rib.

Scuffed, but I still need to edge finish in all those crevices.

After the primer dried on the doubler, I set some NAS (oops) rivets with some dimpled nutplates.

20 rivets.

I didn't tighten these down at all, just threaded them into place.

Of course, I had to cleco tonight's work back into the leading edge.

A half hour, 20 rivets.

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Prepping and Priming Some Rear Spar Components

November 20, 2010

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Oh man, I’m furious. I just spent some time doing a huge writeup for this post, and when I clicked, “Post”, it deleted all of my text.

Grrr.

I’ll try to rewrite it, but it is going to have a little bit of an annoying tone.

Anyway, I managed to get out in the shop today for a little. I had previously gotten all of the doubler plates and reinforcement forks matchdrilled to the spar, so today was all about prepping and priming.

Here’s W-707F, which sits on the back side of the left spar. I’ve deburred and scuffed it; all I need to do now is dimpled the outboard holes in preparation for attaching it to the spar and outboardmost rib.

I love scuffed parts. They hide my fingerprints.

Here’s W-707E, which is the doubler plate that sits on the aft side of the rear spar, right in the middle. I’ve marked the cutout for the aileron push tube. Where’s that step drill?

Yup, here you can see my fingerprints.

I started looking around for my stepdrill. I spent good money on that stepdrill, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. On the workbench, under the workbench, on the floor, in some other shelves. I thought maybe I put it in some other tool’s case, so I got out the dremel tool, multifunction tool, jig saw, circular saw, etc. Nothing.

I even accused the girlfriend of selling it on the black market to fund an bottle of Opus One. She insisted that while she thought about it, she didn’t.

I remember putting it in this old small cabinet of drawers (that my dad gave me when I graduated college…thanks, dad!). I spent about 30 minutes just pulling out each one of these drawers, looking for my step-drill. Grrr.

After continuing to work on the airplane (angrily) for another 30 minutes, I finally found it when I came back to the drawers and opened them with my other hand. Apparently my sausage fingers (they’re not, I promise…I’m just mad) blocked my view of the stepdrill, which was right behind the lip of the VERY FIRST DRAWER.

Ugh.

Anyway. Back to the rear spar. This is the forward side of the left spar, outboard end. I’ve deburred the edges of the whole spar, and now I’m deburring all of the holes I drilled.

I always scuff the areas where there are holes I've drilled and deburred. Helps me keep the "did I do this already" time to a minimum.

Oh yeah, I managed to get a couple parts primed today. Like riveting, I always feel like it is a productive day if I can prime some things.

You can also see my primer of choice, Napa 7220.

Here’s the other side of those pieces (after plenty of drying time).

I like priming.

Back to the spar, more deburring holes and scuffing.

I'll finish scuffing the whole spar when I get closer to priming.

This is the middle of the rear spar, around the aileron pushtube hole. More deburring and scuffing.

Jeesh, there are fingerprints everywhere.

Finally, I brought the two primed parts back inside.

Primed parts on the workbench always means we're getting close to riveting. Wuhoo!

After this was about when I finally found my step-drill. I was too angry at myself to keep going, so I headed inside to some grilled chicken, jasmine rice, and creamed corn. Mmmm.

1.5 hours

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Posted by Andrew

Right Rear Spar Doubler and Reinforcement Fork

September 8, 2010

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The next step on the rear spars is to trip the W-707D and W-707G Rear Spar Doubler and Reinforcement Fork to size.

These parts are shared between the RV-7 and RV-8 (and maybe more, I’m not sure), and must be trimmed if you are building the -7.

This is a tricky trim job, though, because many people have future troubles with drilling the rear spar to the fuselage and maintaining the required edge distance for the hole in THESE PIECES.

It would be best not to overtrim, and leave even less margin than what is already there.

The plans and construction manual both point to Dwg 38, which is of course not included as a full-scale sheet in the wing kit, so I got out my preview plans and started staring.

Even though I’m only working on the right side for now (will bring the left wing up to the right side’s progress when I get the replacement spar from vans), I’m going to do both sides of this now while I’m all mind-prepped to do it.

A snapshot of the applicable portion of Dwg 38. Looks like I should start measuring and marking. (No cutting yet, though!)

Keep in mind here that you measure from the edge you are about to start cutting away, so once you start cutting there is no double-checking your measurements.

Of course, I'm being dumb by doing the right side first (left is shown in the drawing above.)

Here are both lines drawn, measured, double-checked etc. It's still all making sense, so that is a good thing.

The bottom cut off. (For you OCD types, I realize I should have made the other cut first, which would have been a little less cutting overall, but oh well).

I decided to cleco the two smaller pieces together first, then transfer the lines to the bigger forks, and do those separately.

Ready to transfer the lines.

Of course, I didn’t get any in-progress shots of the fork cutting, but it went well. I then clecoed the left and right assemblies together and grabbed this shot after a few passes on the scotchbrite wheel.

At the end of this project, I am going to go back and count how many toes ended up in all the pictures. Here's...{counting}...6 more.

After some time on the scotchbrite wheel, I have two ready-to-cleco parts.

Nice and scuffed.

Then, I clecoed the doubler plate and reinforcement fork to the right rear spar and started matchdrilling.

Matchdrilling.

I had a hard time deciding if I should enlarge some of the rib attachment holes in the fork and doubler plate to final size, and I decided I would. I couldn’t find anyone who said it would be a bad idea, and now I’ll get to deburr and prime all of the rear spar components.

I did leave the majority of the rear spar “future” holes alone, though. I guess per the directions (indirectly, just in step order), I’ll drill those after priming the rear spar.

Here's a picture from the backside (actually, front side) of the spar.

Of course, I was careful to mark and enlarge to #40 the flange holes that need to be dimpled now (the reinforcement fork prevents the female side of the dimple die from getting behind these holes).

I didn't actually dimple, though. I need to leave something for tomorrow.

After taking everything apart and deburring holes, I have a few pieces ready for priming, and a rear spar with some remaining deburring before priming.

I scuffed the rear spar where I had already drilled and deburred to help remind myself what I have left to deburr.

Today’s hour was a good one; a few things ready to prime, and just one deburring and priming session away from being able to rivet the rear spar assembly together.

I need to go buy some more Napa 7220 Self-Etching Primer.

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Started Prepping Left Elevator Skeleton

July 2, 2010

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Even though it was my day off, I spent the day trying not to get stung by bees (mowing the forest behind my fence) and meeting the girlfriend for food. After that, I managed to waste an hour or so installing a fan in the garage. Recently, it’s been brutal in the garage, so this morning, while I was walking around Lowe’s, I saw a small ceiling fan for $17. I couldn’t say no. It was harder to install than our nicer fans inside (no little quick-disconnect fan blades or anything), but in the end, it makes me cooler in the garage (double meaning intended).

Huzzah!

Okay, back to work. I think you guys might have seen this picture yesterday, but here it is again…the little riblet I made after drilling.

Looks good. I am proud of this little guy.

Then, I moved over to the spar. These four holes get countersunk because they attach E-705, but the elevator horn has to sit over the rivets but still flush against the forward face of the web.

Beautiful countersinks.

While I had the countersink cage set up, I pulled the trim tab spar out of the elevator and started on it.

Countersink the top flange, dimple the bottom flange.

Aren't these countersinks nice?

After countersinking, both the tab spar and the left elevator main spar were scuffed (more), edge-finished, and then got a trip inside to the sink for a quick rinse before coming back outside to eventually get a coat of primer.

I'm getting close to riveting something, watch out!

Anyway, two very productive hours, and I think I can rivet some reinforcement plates tomorrow if I want. Wuhoo!

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Posted by Andrew

Trim Tab Fitting

July 1, 2010

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Okay. Today was a pretty productive day. I had taken everything apart, then realized I still had some more fitting to do on the tab, so I put it all back together again. Before that, though, I thought and thought about what to do about the two holes on the right side of the picture. These are for the fiberglass tips, and they are supposed to be matchdrilled later, after the counterbalance skin is installed as a lap joint underneath. How can I deburr parts that are riveted together if I drill through both? Maybe it’s not a big deal, but I decided to drill them to #30 now (for #6 screws).

Two holes the right before drilling...

...and after.

Then, I was thinking ahead about the safety wire trick you have to do with the hinge pin. Why not drill that now, so I can deburr before priming?

I drilled this just larger than 0.060, which is one of the biggest safety wire sizes.

Next, time to deburr and dimple the left elevator spar.

Me dimpling.

And after everything was dimpled, a nice picture down the spar of my blurry recycling bin, golf clubs, and motorcycle jack. (No motorcycle anymore, but the jack comes in handy to lift the corner of a car when a tire needs to be taken off for one reason or another.)

Spar! (I'm tired, so we are down to one word captions for the day.)

Another shot of the same.

Dimple! (Wouldn't it be annoying if I everything I wrote ended in an exclamation mark?!)

After edge finishing the two hinge reinforcement plates, I shot them with primer.

Primed!

Then, my attention turned back to the tab.  I’ve clecoed the elevator half of the tab hinge back in, and on the right you can see my drilled riblet!

Drilled riblet! (Okay, I've had enough of the exclamation points.....!)

Here’s a better picture. I basically drew a line perpendicular to the hinge line up from one of the holes along the trim spar, then spaced them at 1.5 and 3 inches. That spaced everything evenly, and gave me plenty of edge distance all around.

Don't look at my edges, they aren't finished yet, but you get the idea.

Then, I stuck the tab on and inserted the hinge.

As some would say, "Easy Peasy."

Other direction, just for kicks (not as much deflection due to cleco interference, but again, you get the idea).

Because I bought a longer section of hinge to replace my bad first attempt, my hinge pin was long enough to actually fit (Van’s says they will send you the real one (because it needs to be longer than 18″) in the finish kit.

I got to bending.

After more bending, I ended up with something like this.

Ooh, isn't that pretty! The safety wire hole I drilled earlier is in the middle there, and will allow me to safety wire this hinge pin to the spar so it won't COME OUT IN FLIGHT!

Then, I figured out how to do video. They speak for themselves, but keep in mind that while my gap is intentionally small, I still need to edge finish, which will open them up.

Another video, this time a little closer. You can see I am pushing and pulling left and right to make sure there is no interference even with the small amount of play in the hinge. I think I am okay, but this will probably open up a little after edge-finishing.

Two hours of late-night-hinge-pin-bending bliss.

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