Started Banging Rivets on the Right Leading Edge

April 22, 2011

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.