(9-2 step 3):
Another late night at work tonight... So while Angela waited for
her riveting partner to get home (pun intended) she made use of her
time alone by jumping back on the elevator ribs. She finished
deburring the remaining ones... always a fun job! She then
clecoed the upper and lower halves of all 16 of the ribs together and
final drilled the common holes. Right about the time she was
finishing this up I made it home and out in the shop to give her a
hand... we could now get back to riveting the horizontal stabilizer!!
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| We
placed our order for more AD4-6 rivets yesterday, and in fact went
ahead and got a bit more of all the ones we have in our inventory to
try and avoid waiting in the future. One thing we've learned is
extra rivets are a good idea because even if Van's gives you the exact
number they call for in the plans of every single rivet, there are
quite a few times where the rivet called for isn't the best fit for the
application and you wind up using a different size. This causes
you to be short on some and have too many on others... so extra rivets
on hand is a good thing! |
(8-3 step 14): Annnnnyyyway... while we wait for the rivets to finish something like
30 holes on the spar flange, we decided to work just on the side of the
horizontal stabilizer that we do have all the flange rivets driven.
So, the first step was to install the rivets attaching the skins to the
inspar ribs up to the stringers. Then we installed the rivets
attaching the skins to the stringers. While doing this, there are 5
rivets that are completely hidded on the shank side because of the
stringer itself. On the outside, its just another rivet but trying to
buck those guys... well, it isn't really that difficult, you just can't
see them... I call it 'bucking by braille' ;-) After shooting each one
you have to insert a mirror in order to see it and determine if it's
set correctly or not. Welp... on one of them, right after Angela
pulled the trigger I let the bucking bar slip off... you definitely
know when it happens... it suddenly vibrates a LOT less! As it made
its way off the shank it beat the rivet down a bit... here's the
results... definitely going to have to drill that one out... [sigh]
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So mark it, and come back to it later...
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Once we finished all the rivets
we planned to buck (the entire bottom left surface of the horizontal
stabilizer) I wen't back and drilled the offending rivet out.
Last time I drilled through the entire rivet. I've since learned
you're only supposed to drill into it just enough to be able to pop the
head off, and then you use a punch to drive the shank out the other
side. Here's the results of my attempt. The boogered up
shank is on the left, its shaft that used to be attached to the head is
facing the popped off head on the right. I think I did a pretty
nice job, don't you think!
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(8-13 step 5): Neither
Angela nor I were feeling like we were in 'the groove' tonight with our
bucking, so for the rivets attaching the lower left skin to the end
ribs we used the squeezer.
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We basically did all the rivets
on the skin in the foreground above the spar flange rivets tonight...
the clecoes are starting to disappear!!!
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