(7-11 step 1):
Well, it was time... time to try my hand at 'double-flush'
riveting. Angela & I had done it in Orndorf's class back in
November, but this was the real deal... no more training kit. So
I jumped right in! I took the angle-iron we used to pro-seal the
trailing edge and clamped it to the edge of the table again. I
used this as my back-rivet plate. I set the middle rivet first
most of the way (not all the way per the plans) starting out parallel
to the rivet shank, and rotating slightly during the bucking to match
the angle of the skin on top...
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I
took my sweet time doing this, as I did not want a curved or 'hooked'
trailing edge on the rudder. It might have been overkill, but I
checked the straightness of the rudder after every rivet.
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I
had also heard that one good defense against a 'hooked' rudder was to
do every-other rivet from one side, & the others from the other
side. This made sense to me since the reason a hook occurs is
because of the rivets putting more stress on one side than the
other. If you could divide that stess up equally to both sides,
then it seemed this would help counter the problem. I know its
possible to do a perfect job with them all from one side, but I'm sure
that takes a bit of skill... and as of right now, I don't have a whole
bunch of that! So I'm trying to put the odds in my favor.
After partially setting the first batch of rivets I flipped the rudder
over (per the plans) and finished setting the rivets on their
manufactured head in more or less the same order I did them
originally. This produced a nice flat head on the shop side, and
as a bonus, the longer-than-called-for rivets actually filled up the
dimples much better than the rivets we did on our training project back
in November. Here's a shot showing the manufactured head side
after the first batch. The other holes will be filled with rivets
from the other side. You can also see the 'slight bend' Van's
calls for in the trailing edge. We decided this probably wasn't
necessary since it remained after we completed the trailing edge.
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All-in-all, the trailing edge turned out pretty nice. I didn't take a picture of it, but trust me... it did ;-)
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