Right Tank Inboard Rib Work

June 5, 2011

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After another full weekend of housework, errands, etc., I managed to fit in some work on the right tank’s inboard rib.

First thing, I fished out some parts. Here, Vans has punched out three parts, T-407 and T-410.

Hmm...where are my snips?

I decided to pull both assemblies(?) out and get them all deburred at the same time.

Here are the two access hole doubler rings and four rib reinforcement plates after deburring.

I put two of the reinforcements and one of the rings away until needing them on the other tank.

Then, I took one of the rings, centered it over the stiffener bump on the inboard rib, and used a straightedge to find the center of the circle.

"x" marks the spot.

I know I’m not really working on the left tank right now, but  I decided that since I KNOW the circle cutter is going to be a PITA, I’ll just go ahead and do the left rib, too.

I fished out the two end ribs for the left tank and marked them so I knew which is which.

L1 and L7.

Before mounting the ribs up on the drill press, I needed to find some wood backing. How’s this tank-rib-shaped piece right here?

Pepsi should pay me for the product placement.

Whoa. That sucked. It sucked so bad, I didn’t even take any pictures. Among other things, the circle cutter 1) wouldn’t stay in one diameter, 2) shook so badly I thought my workbench was going to fall over, 3) almost killed me twice.

But, I finally managed to get a decent looking hole.

Phew, I'm glad that's over.

See? Nice hole.

Oops, looks like the hole was a little big. No worries, edge distance for the rivets is just fine.

The hole in the rib is a little big...

After some more cursing, cheating death, and general unhappiness, I managed to get a better (appropriately sized) hole on the left inboard rib.

I think I'm going to throw away the fly cutter now. Stupid piece of crap.

Okay, I’m straying from the instructions a little here. Normally, they want you to take this access cover, hold it against the rib, and use the prepunched #19 holes to drill holes in the rib. Then, hold the stiffener right aligned with those holes, and drill the nutplate attach rivet holes. Clear?

Instead, I’m going to eyeball the clocking of the access cover (so the flat part doesn’t interfere with the indentation in the rib), then just use the stiffener ring for all the drilling. (I need to order a new access cover with no holes in it because I’m using flop tubes (don’t need the small hole), which means I need to move the float sender to the second bay (don’t need the large hole).)

You can see in this picture, the stiffener ring is laid in place, and it looks like the access cover is clocked correctly.

Access cover in the foreground, stiffener ring in the background.

Clamped.

Drilled.

Dimpled the rib, and countersunk the ring.

clecoed some K1000-8 nutplates in place.

Here’s where things got frustrating. Because I wasn’t paying attention, I just started riveting the nutplates in place.

Clearly I didn't countersink enough.

Another view. Yikes.

I drilled out six nutplates (didn’t enlarge any holes in the rib or stiffener), but couldn’t get the rivets out of the nutplates. They got THROWED AWAY!

Sorry, nutplates. You are going in the trash. It's not worth my time to fix you.

Okay, more countersinking, then try again. Still not deep enough? Ugh, more countersinking again, and finally, they were deep enough.

I got frustrated, so I stopped taking pictures. Sorry.

After much cursing and angry mumbling, I got all 24 rivets in for the 12 nutplates.

I had to drill out two more rivets because they were sitting a little proud. In the end though, I’m happy with the results.

These didn't need sealant because the access cover will be sealed over them.

A shop head shot.

24 rivets, 8 drilled out. (one third!? Ugh.)

2.0 glorious hours today.

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Rolled Right Elevator Leading Edge

July 31, 2010

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How exciting! I get to roll the right elevator leading edge today!

Okay, if you couldn’t sense the sarcasm there, I’ll lay it out for you. I hate rolling leading edges.

This first section actually turned out nice after the roll. It was pretty easy to squeeze these together and rivet.

See? EasY!

Then, I took a picture of how I tape, which I have since ammended.

Now, I put tape along the entire edge, overlapping once piece with another.

Of course, since things started going badly, I forgot to take more pictures, but rest assured, I have some unintentional puckering between rivets on one of my rolled sections. The crappy thing is that once you roll and remove the pipe and tape, it is really hard to go back and re-roll.

Anyway, I moved on to installing the rod-end bearings.

Here is my rod-end bearing tool.

You can see how the rod-end just fits right in there. (The purpose of the tool is to help turn the rod-end in the nutplate without putting any pressure on the actual round bearing in the center.)

Tightening.

They want you to install the elevator rod-ends to 13/16″.

That's 13/16".

Right on the money.

After getting those in, I set the elevators aside and moved back to the trim tab. Here, I’m using wood backing (so the pilot of the countersink cutter has a good guide) and countersinking the holes on the top of the spar only (you can’t dimple the top, because the hinge sits just underneath the spar flange).

I'mi using a scrap piece of wood flooring here.

Then, it was time to dimple the skin. I only got the tab to a place where I can cleco it back together. I still have to fabricate some trim tab riblets.

Dimpled tab skin.

Then, I dragged the horizontal stabilizer out of the storage room and installed the elevators. Once I realized I had to drill out the hinge brackets to #12, the bolts went right in.

It looks like an airplane. And it's huge.

I’ll take more pictures of it for you sometime, but for now, I’m just going to leave this assembly on the workbench for a few days and admire it.

3 hours today.  22 more rivets.

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More work on the Counterbalance Skin

July 20, 2010

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Things have been slow with the airplane recently, right? Well, after a few weeks of letting the garage slowly spiral into a mess of hall closet items (while I’m redoing the floors), saw dust (while I’m redoing the floors), and aluminum dust/shavings (I am working on the plane a little), I decided it was time to get things cleaned up. After an hour of cleaning and organization, I snapped this picture of a nice clean workbench and floor area. Doesn’t really do it justice, but something about a clean workbench makes me happy (notice how I am not showing you a picture of my second workbench!)

(Don't tell the girlfriend I had the vacuum cleaner up on the table going back and forth. It works pretty well, but I accept no blame if you try this at home.)

Okay, finally on to the project. My replacement E-713 came the other day. instead of trying to cleco it on to the already-dimpled skeleton and matchdrill, I am going to trust Vans’ pre-punches and just run a #40 bit through the appropriate holes before deburring and dimpling.

After that was complete, I taped the outside of the skin that I want to protect from primer and scuffed everything up.

Ready to prime...almost. I'm still waiting on a #10 dimple die from Avery. Should be here any day.

Because this part of the exterior side is under the main left elevator skin, I'm going to prime it. Those two smaller holes need to be drilled to #28 before dimpled for #6 screws.

After that, I grabbed my two trim tab horns, and deburred, scuffed, and dimpled the flange holes.

I still need to trim these down per the plans for the electric elevator trim, but I also haven't ordered my electric elevator trim kit yet.

Finally, I disassembled the trim tab to get a little start on that. Here’s the spar, deburred, scuffed, and dimpled on the bottom flange.

The top flange (on the left side of the picture) needs to be countersunk for the upper trim tab skin, because the hinge sits just below the flange, and can't accept a dimpled flange.

2 hours in the shop today, but only 1 hour counts as build time. Hooray clean shop!

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Started Riveting Left Elevator Skeleton

July 5, 2010

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After the last couple work sessions priming various parts, I was getting all hot and bothered to rivet something. I thought I would tackle the spar reinforcements. I also forgot to charge the camera battery, so I’m using the new phone. Hopefully they turn out okay.

Here's the left elevator spar and reinforcement plates.

I got out a few rivets. AN470AD4-5 and -6.

Let's get riveting.

I clecoed the reinforcement plates and nutplates onto the spar, and riveted the four corners and one ear of the nutplate, then took out the clecos and riveted the rest.

The tape is a trick I have been using out of vanity. The rivets look better when they haven't been marred up by the rivet set.

After doing both plates, I put the spar back on the table.

Pretty.

And just to show you AGAIN how much I love my new tungsten bucking bar, here are the perfect shop heads.

The inboard shop heads.

The outboard shop heads.

Next up is to continue riveting on the skeleton, so I pulled E-705 out of the “recently match-drilled” pile and got it deburred, dimpled, edge-finished, and prepped for priming.

Ready to prime.

This is the other side after being shot with primer.

16 rivets set in 30 minutes of building after 30 minutes of shop cleanup (cleaned out the shopvac, etc).

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Drilled E-714, Clecoed Left Elevator Skin

June 10, 2010

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Hey Look! Andrew’s not dead! Yeah, I’ve been working on some house projects. Back to the left elevator tonight, though.

I managed to catch myself up with where I was and push on today. I need to get that counterweight drilled.

Here you can see the counterweight, counterbalance skin, and the two end ribs around which the other parts reside.

After placing the weight in position, you cleco on the skin (difficultly) and get ready to match-drill. Of course, I met the same challenges I did on the right elevator…namely, I broke a drill bit (#40 size). After getting a pilot hole drilled, I took everything apart and separately enlarged them all to #21. Air tool oil was used with great success after the pilot hole was drilled.

Ready to start drilling.

I didn’t take any pictures, though, because I was getting frustrated. (At first, I was dipping the drill bit into the oil, which meant I had to take the lid off. Then, after stepping away a few minutes later, I placed the screw lid (with the flip-up spout) back on the oil bottle and immediately flipped it over to aim oil into the pilot hole. Guess what! I forgot to tighten down the lid. There goes the lid, and about a 1/2 cup of oil…all over the counterweight, table, and floor.)

Now do you see why I forgot to keep taking pictures?

Anyway, after that debacle (which of course gets counted in the build time…it’s time spent building, right?)

Anyway, here is that same assembly (sans weight) before clecoing on the skin.

In preparation for clecoing on the skin, I needed to handle E-606PP, which is the trim tab hinge spar. Since I was looking ahead earlier and dimpled the hard-to-reach holes (you can see in the skin below), I need to do something with the spar to accept those dimples. If you read ahead in the directions, the spar is countersunk on the top flange (because the hinge is riveted beneath the spar flange, it can’t be dimpled), and dimpled on the bottom flange.

June 10 Update: After countersinking these four holes, I later did some more research and realized that the countersinks called for (due to the hinge) don’t really apply here, because the hinge stops short of these four holes. I could have (and wished I’d ) dimpled. Boo.

Here are the two parts that need to fit together nicely.

Finally, I got the skeleton and skin clecoed together.

Wuhoo. It looks like an airplane.

A solid hour. Maybe more this weekend.

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Backriveted Left Elevator Stiffeners

June 1, 2010

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I wasn’t feeling well today (sore throat, could harldy swallow), but after a nice long sleep-in and a nap in the afternoon, I went out to the garage partly because I wanted to sweat out some of the demons. I didn’t take a ton of pictures, but I managed a few.

I broke out the c-frame and dimpled the skins.

First up, skin dimpling.

I did much better on the trailing edge dimples than last time (see this post).

This is the worst one, but it still looks great, and is hardly noticeable unless you are really looking for it.

After dimpling, I wiped down all of the scuffed areas with MEK to rid them of fingerprints (oils) aluminum dust, moisture, etc., and then primed.

Primed interior. Notice how I leave a lot of the blue vinyl on the skins? This helps keep weight down (although undoubtedly adds to build time while I painstakingly trace around the stiffeners with a marker and use those lines to devinyl.

Moving back to the skeleton, I mounted a one-leg 1/4″ nutplate in the forward tooling hole of the counterbalance and tip ribs. This will hold any future weight I need to balance the elevator with paint.

I used an undersized countersunk screw in the tooling hole to help locate the nutplate, then drilled one hole and clecoed from the back.

Both holes drilled, and the main hole enlarged to something a little larger than 1/4"...I can't remember...maybe 5/32"?

Next, I moved back to the spar. I have read where a few people have added a hole in the lightening hole area of the elevator control horn/spar area. The right hole is for manual trim or for the (what I’ll call “retracted”) jack screw and wiring runs for the electric trim motor. I, like others, don’t like the idea of the wires and jack screw sharing the same hole, so I drilled another hole, in which I will add a 3/8″ snap bushing.

Pilot hole eye-balled.

Crap, I didn't even get a picture of the final size hole. (I drilled it to 3/8".)

After completed the extra hole, I noticed the skin was dry. Nothing to stop me from backriveting, now.

Rivets place in, and taped to, the first stiffener row.

Same thing with the trim reinforcement area.

After backriveting the trim reinforcement. Man, this makes me happy.

The next couple rows, done.

The bottom half went smoothly. The top half now has rivets taped in place.

Where are those stiffeners?

This isn't a very exciting picture, but they are all riveted.

Here's the inside.

I love this picture. This is the trim reinforcement plate area.

So nice. (That scratch at the top is very superficial. It'll buff right out, I promise.)

Biggest lesson today was about the aft-most rivet in the stiffeners. When bending the skin out of the way to reach that rivet, everything twists out of alignment. If you start with that rivet, it is easier to make sure everything is flush than if you rivet the forward ones first. Start from the back and move forward. You will get better results.

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Primed the rest of the Left Elevator Stiffeners

May 31, 2010

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Tonight, I moved on with the left elevator by matchdrilling the upper stiffeners.

Here are the upper left elevator stiffeners, after trimming, being matchdrilled to the skin. First, I drilled and clecoed the forwardmost hole.

The three forwardmost holes clecoed.

After finishing, I traced the stiffener outlines on the inside and outside of the skin.

These will help me devinyl later.

You can see I have already done the lower surface of the elevator (it's upside-down on the table).

And, of course, since I forgot to add RTV to the right elevator (still trying to figure out a way to get some RTV in there), I wrote a little reminder on the inside of the left elevator.

Hopefully I'll see this as I pull out the last of the blue vinyl just before assembly.

Next, devinyl along the traced lines and then deburr and scuff.

Left elevator skin interior after devinyling, deburring, and scuffing.

Next up, I deburred and scuffed the remaining stiffeners. (I don’t have any pictures, but after this, they got dimpled and then primed.)

Because the upper surface doesn't have the trim reinforcement plate, there are 4 (instead of 3) of the short stiffeners.

Next up, devinyl and deburr the outside of the skin.

Skin devinyling.

A small tip here. I decided that at the aft end of the elevator, i would leave a little blue vinyl instead of connecting the upper and lower surface bare spots. This way, If I need to rest the elevator on its trailing edge, I won't be damaging the finish on the trailing edge.

Because it was late, I couldn’t use the c-frame.

Instead, I grabbed the hand squeezers and dimpled anything I could reach.

Just for kicks, I held up the trim reinforcement plate (and cover, still covered in blue vinyl) which will be riveted underneath the skin to the right.

Here are the other sides of the upper stiffeners getting primed.

I toook these inside for a good washing with Dawn before drying them, wiping with MEK, drying some more, and then shooting with primer.

I had a few more minutes, so I started match-drilling the skeleton. Here is one of the spar reinforcement plates being drilled to the spar.

I used my 12" #30 bit due to cleco-clearance issues.

Finally, before heading in, I shot a coat of primer on the other side of the upper left elevator stiffeners.

Nighty-night.

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Primed Some Left Elevator Stiffeners

May 29, 2010

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Not too much today. I got the lower left elevator stiffeners deburred, dimpled and primed.

Here are some of the stiffeners on the priming table.

Then, I turned my attention back to the skin to start devinyling.

Left elevator, ready to be devinyled.

Here are a couple lines showing my devinlying process. These are made with a soldering gun held against a wooden straight-edge.

Oh yeah, almost forgot. I stumbled across another Harbor Freight coupon. I bought this ~$10 storage container for wing hardware.

I have two already, one for rivets, and one for Empennage hardware. I assume I'll need a third for wing hardware (I'll combine the rivets from wing and emp if need be).

Okay, back to the project. I’ve pulled off some of the vinly strips.

Pulled off some of the vinyl strips.

Here, my devinyl line overlaps the tracing a little.

Another angle here.

So I put the trim spar in position, and realized I could move the line back a little, so that's what I did.

Next, I deburred and scuffed the skin in preparation for dimpling. (It’s easier to scuff before dimpling.)

The lines to the right have been scuffed, the trim spar reinforcement area has not.

A closeup of scuffed versus not-scuffed.

To scuff an area (in preparation for priming), I scuff in one 45° direction…

45° to the right.

Then, 90° from that.

All done. You can sort of see the two directions.

Finally, some dry stiffeners, ready to be backriveted to the skins.

Pretty stiffeners.

I always like to take a big picture shot at the end of the day.

Left skin, ready for dimpling.

Tomorrow, maybe a little skin dimpling, priming, and backriveting stiffeners.

One hour.

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Final Prep for Right Elevator

May 20, 2010

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Well, after deciding not to work out tonight (in favor of wine), I made it out to the garage pretty late for some final prep work before riveting the right elevator.

Tonight's build partner, 2004 Manyana (play on words) Crianza. A delicious tempranillo from Spain.

On with the building, you say? Fine.

One of the last real fabrication items I have left on the right elevator was enlarging the counterbalance skin dimples. To make a long story short, I don’t have #10 dimple dies, so I dimpled with #8, and then planned on using the AN507 screw head and a nut tightened down to enlarge the dimple enough for the screw to sit flush.

This did not work.

Okay, instead of waiting for a week for a $40 dimple die to arrive, let’s be creative.

Plan: matchdrill two holes in a block of wood, countersink the holes, then use a flush set to enlarge the dimples.

Here's my block of wood, later to be countersunk.

Well, I don’t really have any good pictures of my attempt, because that didn’t work either, and I was getting frustrated.

Finally, I told the girlfriend to come out and listen to me explain the problem. (I knew this would help me come up with a solution.)

Without even flinching. “Why don’t you use a bigger screw to make your dimple?”

my face = <deer in the headlights>

Of course! (Except I didn’t have a bigger countersunk crew, but it set me down the right path.)

This should work. (It's my punch set that came with my rivet gun.)

Setup recreated (I had a piece of tape on the skin to prevent marring.)

The hole on the left has been "enlarged." This worked great!

Okay, let’s move on. Next up, I needed to locally bevel the edges where the spar and tip rib are underneath the counterbalance rib (so the top skin doesn’t show the transition bulges. So I marked those, and also started thinking about how to attach these empennage tips. See the two undimpled holes to the right? Those are two (well, 4, two on top and two on bottom) tip attach points that will eventually be drilled, deburred, and dimpled. Might as well do it now so I don’t have to worry about deburring between riveted sheets.

Lining things up to wrap my head around this interface.

I flipped the pieces over and drilled them to #30.

The top two holes have been drilled and deburred, ready for dimpling.

After dimpling…this #6 screw fits pretty well. (Editorial note: I’m pretty locked in to attaching the elevator tips with screws. I know there is really no reason to take the tips off, but right now, I don’t want to commit to blind rivets.)

That #6 screw looks like it will fit pretty well.

Once the other side was done, I primed the interior (and taped off exterior) side of the counterbalance skin.

Priming. You can see the two #6 dimples at the top of the left side of the skin. (I'll do the rest later...the rest are all accessible in the future.)

While that dries…let’s devinyl!

Hooray for devinyling!

All done. (After using compressed air to blow the flaked primer off.)

Back to emp tip attachment, here are the #6 holes in the skin, dimpled the same way as the counterbalance skin.

Nice big dimples. (Whoa, I forgot to deburr that relief hole on the left there. Fixed after picture taken.)

Let’s get this thing clecoed together.

Those big dimples sit nicely in each other. Here you can see those two holes are the only holes that overlap.

Next, the manual has you rivet the following two holes (not accessible once the spar and tip ribs are in place).

Protected with tape, this rivets were set beautifully.

Without clecos, it's starting to look like an elevator.

Next, “loosely place” the counterbalance in the counterbalance skin and “partially” insert the screws.

The untrimmed (on purpose) counterweight in the counterbalance skin.

last, but not least, they have you insert the skeleton in the skin and cleco together.

Wuhoo! It really does look like an elevator!

Those screw heads are pretty flush. (They are not tight yet, so they'll sit a little better once I get them tightened down.)

A couple pictures of some of the interfaces.

Just behind the counterweight.

Trailing edge of the tip.

Inside corner of the counterbalance rib. (What's that stuff hanging from the top edge? I'll have to investigate later.)

Finally, the trailing edge of the inboard rib.

Ready to rivet!

One more shot.

1.5 hours, 4 flush rivets set.

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Right Elevator Stiffener Drilling and Dimpling

April 14, 2010

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Another fairly boring night with right elevator stiffeners, but the end is near (end of right elevator stiffeners, not the whole airplane), so I’ll keep plugging away.

My setup for drilling stiffeners. I used the cordless today so I wasn't making too much noise. I'm almost done with this side.

I matchdrilled every hole except for the last hole (closest to the trailing edge.) Some of these last holes are both pre-punched, and just need to be matchdrilled to final size, and some are missing the holes in the stiffeners. You have to use the skin to matchdrill the stiffener.

Down the right elevator.

I unclecoed most of the stiffeners and then re-clecoed the stiffeners (just at the ends) with the elevator off of the table so I can roll it over to drill.

Ready to flip over and matchdrill those last stiffener holes.

One picture of the last hole.

The hole at the end of the "3" is the one I need to matchdrill.

After that, I used a thick sharpie to trace the stiffeners to help with future devinyling. Then, I flipped the whole thing over to start on the other side. Same process, though.

About halfway done with this side.

Then, uncleco from the table to flip over and get the last hole.

Unclecoing from the last hole.

No big deal for you, but I marked all of the stiffeners correctly. The right elevator in the background is sitting upside-down (I just typed right-side-up, and had to change it. See, I’m still confused). Anyway, the ones on the table are on the top surface of the elevator, but the one in the foreground is marked the top (“Top, A”), but is actually the longest bottom stiffener.

This should be "BA" for "Bottom, A."

After finishing all of the stiffener drilling, I took them inside to deburr. After all of the deburring, I grabbed this shot of the placemat on the kitchen table. (Don’t tell the girlfriend. I got it cleaned up.)

Aluminum shavings galore after deburring. This is kind of a stupid picture, but I already uploaded it, so I'm not going to hold back.

After deburring, I rubbed down the surface that needed to be dimpled, (not the perpendicular surface, and I definitely didn’t do any edge-finishing).

Deburred and scuffed, ready for dimpling.

And I would like to draw your attention to the following three dimples. Don’t they look lovely?

Looks like a professional dimpled these holes.

It was the girlfriend!

Girlfriend dimpling. (She kept giggling after each one. And after each time I said "dimple." There may or may not have been red wine involved.)

Anyway, she made it about 8 dimples before getting “bored” (I think her hands hurt, too). Back outside, I found this little guy.

he's pretty small, but looks kind of scary.

No real identifying marks, but I’m sure someone will be able to help out.

Anyone have any ideas?

As if I hadn’t had enough drama for the night, Ginger came out, grabbed some wood, and took it inside to chew up all over our staircase landing. Here are some of the remnants.

It's better than her eating the window sills. Or the banister. Or our patio chairs. Or my soul.

Anyway, I spent a few more minutes with the Permagrit block rounding the edges of the stiffeners. Next up, edge-finishing with the scotchbrite wheel, scuffing, cleaning, and priming. Then, same dance with the skin and the backriveting!

An hour and a half. Boom shakalaka.

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