Taylor | Andrew's RV-7 Build Log

Finished Right Flap!

July 30, 2012

Well, after approximately 6 months of completely neglecting the airplane, I finally completed another big assembly on the airplane. Here are the gory details.

Yesterday, Taylor and I got all the rib-to-skin rivets set, so today, we finished up the spar rivets and cleaned up a few badly set rivets. Here we are with the every-other method on the lower flap skin (spar) rivets.

Look! no clecos!

Then, we finished getting the two exterior ribs in place. I did make a stupid mistake here, though. The spar rivets are all AN426AD3-4 rivets, and I just continued with that size around the side to the ribs.

Those ribs are SUPPOSED to be AN426AD3-3.5 rivets, so when I went to squeeze the -4s, they all bent over and sheared.

Nastiness here.

Ahh!

After some mild curse words, some deep breathing, and FIVE drilled out rivets, we realized our mistake and got the correctly-sized rivets in there.

Shiny bottom!

I had Taylor shine up the skins. (By “shine” I really mean “remove all of Andrew’s fingerprints.”)

Shiny bottom skin!

Shiny top skin.

I forgot how much fun it is to finish a big assembly.

It’s a wing!

1.0 hour, counted as 1.5 man-hours. 78 rivets, 5 drilled out.

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Posted by Andrew

More Right Flap Work

July 25, 2012

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Alright, another night in the workshop. And, tonight was a super-night. Not because I’m super-rv7-builder (I am), but because my cousin Taylor came over to learn about the airplane.

After a little talking, I put him to work.

First task, empty out the LP4-3s that just arrived from Van’s (my first airplane package in awhile) into one of my empty yellow bins.

Not off to a great start, Taylor.

He quickly started exceeding my expectations though. To get going on this flap, the next few steps are tedious, but the two of us working helped to lessen the pain.

We focused our attention on prepping the right flap lower skin deburring, dimpling, priming, etc.

Here’s the right flap lower skin. Not a really helpful picture. Oh well.

After showing him each of those “d” activities, We stuck the skin outside and proceeded with my new non-psycho masking prime job.

(If you remember from a few posts (months) back, I’m only going to do the straight-line vinyl trick with areas where someone can see. Parts that are closed off will get this treatment.)

Priming along the rivet lines.

Next up, the same trick on the interior ribs.

Deburr, dimple, scuff, clean, and prime.

It started to get dark out, and I needed the flash. Sorry.

Then, so we could end on a high note, we studied the plans a little, read the instructions (a novelty!) and started clecoing everything together to get a sense of how we should assemble this flap.

Here, the ribs and spar are clecoed to the lower skin to lock everything together.