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January 9, 2009

Aft Skin Gauges

After a lot of washing, alodining and priming I was finally ready to assemble; Yes! with real rivets!

I’m trying to build light so I alodined all the parts and primed with Zinc Cromate all layup contact surfaces and surfaces with external exposure. I had already dimpled all the holes so they got the treatment too.

Here the aileron skeleton has been riveted. I hand squeezed as many of the rivets as possible and used the gun on the rest.

Here the balance tube was inserted so the skin could be fitted.

After putting the skin back on the skeleton I clecoed all the rivet holes except the balance tube which is secure with pull rivets. These are stainless Cherry N rivets. I drilled the holes into the lead a little undersized so the fit would be tight.

I’ve now pulled the balance tube rivets and put a few clecoes in the skin/spar flange area to ensure the skin is in the proper final position before pulling the rest of the nose skin rivets (not including the spar flange).

Here the rest of the nose skin pulled rivets have been set and I’m clecoing the gussets on to lock the structure in the final shape. I’ll add all of the top and bottom gussets before beginning to squeeze the solid rivets.

I squeezed about half of the top rivets with the aileron anchored flat to the table. Skip rivet around the structure to spread out the riveting stresses. Next I propped the aileron up so I could begin skip riveting the bottom. I continued skip riveting top and bottom until I ran out of holes. That was satisfying!

The aileron came out straight and flat just as intended. I’ll attribute that mostly to luck and great hints from the builders that have gone before me. Thanks Guys!

The blue tape on the top hinge gussets were to remind me not to rivet these yet. Eric Newton said (in hindsight) that fitting the ailerons to the wing would be much easier if these were left off for now. I’m going to listen to his experience and give it a try.