More rivets

Two productive days! Yesterday I had my first large rivet session. I riveted the stiffeners to the rudder skin. Backriveting is the best option here, so the first step is to insert rivets in the holes and fix them with tape. I use Scotch Magic Tape -- much cheaper than rivet tape and works just as good.

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Then you place the skins with the manufactured rivet heads down on a heavy flat chunk of steel and form the shop heads with the rivet gun. This is how the skin looked afterwards; it really is a different beast now, gone is all the floppiness:

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Then I assembled the VS rear spar. Ready for riveting:

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I taped over the holes where the ribs will be attached, so that I don't accidentally put rivets in:

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All done, gotta love that pneumatic squeezer!

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In the lower part of the spar flush rivets are used. That's where the VS will be attached to the fuselage, and universal rivet heads would interfere:

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This afternoon I first riveted the VS ribs to the front spar:

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I told you that I got some runs on the first ribs I primes ...

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Now I could cleco and then rivet the VS skin to the front spar and the ribs. I love that tungsten bar!!!

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I drilled out four rivets on the VS. On two I slipped with the bucking bar (see the picture below) and two were simply too short. Van's calls for AN426AD3-4 rivets where the front spar and the main rib at the bottom meet, but there's no way to get a proper shop head with that. I ended up using -4.5 and that worked fine.

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Look ma, no clecos! (Except on the rear spar, that is. I can't close any parts before someone official has looked at them.)

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About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by Hendrik Hoeth published on September 5, 2010 7:03 PM.

First rivets was the previous entry in this blog.

Wings ordered is the next entry in this blog.

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