Whoa, Andrew’s building again. I realize that if I make that explanation every time I post, then someone clicking through the posts without seeing the date stamps is going to be a little confused. Anyway, I got a fair amount done today, and I’m feeling pretty motivated to keep some progress going.
Let’s get to the pictures.
First up, I have a whole bunch of primed parts, and I felt like clecoing some together (always helps the motivation to see assemblies rather than parts).
Here’s the left lower flap skin along with the ribs. I was very careful to review the plans to make sure I got all of the flanges pointing the correct way.
And yes, the flap is upside down here.
Here it is right side up. The plans or instructions don’t really give you a lot of hints on when to set which rivets, so you kind of have to think ahead. More on that later.
It's starting to look like a flap.
Next up, let’s get the top skin ready. First thing, I removed the blue vinyl and deburred all the holes on this side (I may have de-blued last time, I can’t remember).
Deburred and edge finished. Piece of boring cake.
Next, I started to de-blue the top of the skin, but I wanted to put some clecoes in the aft portion of the skin so the skin wasn’t resting on the workbench. This worked out pretty well for me.
Scuffed and ready to flip for more deburring.
I'm about halfway through pulling off this blue vinyl. It was cold out (so why do you have the garage door open?) and the vinyl adhesive was extra sticky.
After more deburring, I broke out the hand squeezer and put some new blue tape on my dies.
Ready for action.
Of course, I didn’t get any pictures…I’m out of practice…
I did take the skin outside after some more prep and get a coat of primer on it. While that was drying, I turned my attention back to the ribs and the bottom skin built-in spar.
I set 4 of these AN47AD4-4 rivets. Pretty simple here to squeeze these.
Then, I riveted on the nutplate on the left side of this picture, and riveted each of the AD4- rivets shown.
Great manufactured heads.
Great shop heads.
Then, I backed up a few steps and riveted the other angle bracket onto the inboard half of the spar. The instructions have you do this pretty early, but I waited until everything was primed.
Same thing. Good manufactured heads here.
And good shop heads here.
Once the top skin was dry, I brought it back inside and got everything 50% clecoed.
This part is exciting, there's riveting coming soon!
After putting some of the AN426AD3-3.5 rivets in, I put tape over each of the heads, and riveted.
Ready to rivet.
Then, I took out the remaining clecos, put more rivets in, moved the tape to the unriveted heads, riveted, then removed all the tape.
(Also, I cleaned up the skin before taking this picture, because I want it to look good for you guys.)
Wuhoo! 100 rivets.
I followed the directions mostly, except I was able to buck the 3rd rivet up on the left side. The plans allow you to use blind rivets there if you want.
Blind rivets in the aft two holes.
Wuhoo. 2.5 hours, 100 rivets. I’m back at it!
Posted by Andrew 
Andrew's RV-7 Build Log 