Right Wing Skinned!

November 18, 2012

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Hey, look at that!

We’ve got some major visible progress going on here.

Cousin Taylor came over today and we got the rest of the right wing lower skin riveted.

So shiny!

You get a landscape version, too.

It feels pretty good to have the right wing skinned. All that’s left now is some inspection ports, the pushrods (which I’ll probably postpone until both wings are done).

After that, I’ll get started on the left wing.

1.5 hours for two of us, so 3.0 hours. 178 rivets. Yee haw.

If I break down the hours so far:

Emp (total): 160.5 hours

Misc Wings: 10.5 hours

Spars:  19.0 hours

Ribs: 18.0 hours

Wing: 79.0 hours

Tanks:  46.0 hours

Ail: 27.5 hours

Flaps: 30.5 hours

Wings (total) 230.5 hours

Overall (total): 393.0 hours

HOWEVER. Some of this work (aileron, misc wing, spars) was some left wing work, too. I’m going to estimate time to finish the left wing as Ribs (18.0), Wing (79.0), and tank (46.0) hours. That comes to 143 hours remaining on the left wing. I’ll probably go a little faster than that, but this is a good estimate, and puts me around 550 hours when I’m done with the wings. That sounds about right.

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Posted by Andrew

Finished Riveting Right Wing Main Ribs to the Main Spar

January 21, 2011

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Well, after a quick workout, I manage to get a few rivets set in the main spar.

I quickly got 6 of the 7 remaining right main ribs riveted to the main spar (the outboard rib doesn’t get riveted to the main spar because it shares rivets with the leading edge outboard rib…the rest of them are slightly offset from their leading edge rib neighbors.)

Anyway, after 30 rivets set, I decided that 6 of them needed to be drilled out. Here’s a good example.

Those are called "smileys."

I know exactly why it happens. It’s because I am watching the bucking bar and shop head form. When the shop head is set appropriately, I’m subconsciously lifting the bucking bar away from the shop head before letting go of the rivet gun trigger. The rivet set bounces on the head and creates the smiley.

Of course, when I concentrate on letting go of the trigger first, all goes well.

Anyway, I’ve been trying a new technique with drilling out these AD4- rivets. I’m actually drilling them out from the shop head side. Assuming the shop head is centered over the hole, it is easier to center-locate the drill bit on the flat shop head than the rounded manufactured head. Here are a few pictures of my good results.

I didn't get any oversized holes at all.

Here either.

Here’s what the drilled out rivet looks like.

I started from the shop head side (left here) and finished just prior to hitting the manufactured head. This worked great for me.

After re-setting those 6 rivets, I snagged a picture of all (except for the outboard) ribs riveted to the right main spar.

Wuhoo! Big pieces permanently together!

I flipped the spar over on the stand and clecoed on the rear spar.

One cleco in the rear spar for each rib.

I may get to riveting the rear spar tomorrow…we’ll see.

1.0 hours. 30 rivets set, 6 of them drilled out and re-set.

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Posted by Andrew