Dave’s RV-7A Building Log

Deburred most of the seat ribs. That is truly a boring task. I keep hoping that the deburring will end soon, but I still have to do all of the fuselage skins, the remaining fuselage parts and then everything in the finish kit. There’s still lots of deburring ahead.

On the bright side, I rented a C-172 and flew around a bit today. It’s been too long since I’ve flown. I’ve been dragging on the project a bit lately. That flight helped me remember what the goal is.

Finished reconstructing the two replacement ribs and then deburred the baggage ribs. The weather was good enough for priming today, but I had nothing ready to go. I’m going to work on getting some parts ready to prime for when the weather turns decent again.

Started re-fabricating the two center seat ribs that I messed up. I deburred the edges, cut out the extra part in the middle and laid out lines for cutting the access pieces.

Made the flanges on the aft-most bulkheads square with the skin and then clecoed everything together. There are a few tight clecoes, but it otherwise went together pretty well. I then clecoed on the F-706 bulkhead and bellcrank rib. The bellcrank rib is a real tight fit. Once I make sure the whole assembly is square, it’ll be ready for drilling.

I removed the F-707 bulkhead from the bottom skin and fluted the bottom of it. That made it fit much better.

I pulled out the stringers and trimmed the ends per the plans. That took much longer than I expected. It’s kind of difficult to swing around 8′ stringers in a garage that is starting to get pretty full.

I then set the stringers in the bulkheads and started clecoing on the side skins. I followed Dan’s advice of clecoed along the bottom/side skin seam first. That worked pretty well. Then I tried working up the bulkheads. That was not working at all until Julie helped me out. It’s much easier with one person aligning holes from the inside and the other putting in clecos from the outside.

Once that was all put together, I grabbed the tail skin assembly. I slid the stringers forward and dropped the tail skin assembly in place. I put in just a couple of clecos and slid the stringers all the way to the back. The stringers look great. The aft-most bulkheads are going to need some flange tweaking.

Julie had to mark the occasion with a group shot.

After getting all of the bulkheads assembled, I figured it would be fun to cleco the bottom tail skin to the F-711 and F-712 bulkheads. Well, it’s not that fun. Following the advice on other builder sites, I carefully bent the tabs to match the contour of the skin. That helped quite a bit, but it’s still a tough fit. That is a really thick skin, and it’s not quite curved enough.

And then for some real fun, I got out the bottom aft bulkhead skin and clecoed on the F-708 and F-707 bulkheads. It’s a bit of a trick to get the built-in J-channels on the bottom skin into the slots on the bulkheads. Once I got that figured out and was clecoing thing together, I figured out that I didn’t flute the bottom of the F-707 bulkhead. It’s not sitting on there very well, so fluting is definitely indicated.

That’s where I quit for the night.

The replacement seat ribs showed up from Van’s, so I should go back and work on the center section a bit more. I’d like to get the seat and baggage ribs deburred so I can prime them outdoors before winter really sets in. Hopefully then I won’t have to prime anything major for a while.

Finished riveting together the F-711 bulkhead and then did the F-712. I almost forgot how fun it is to actually put stuff together. After I riveted together the F-712 bulkhead, I remembered that I still needed to tap the tie down. The taps I have are a little lame. They can only tap a one inch deep hole. The plans call for 1-1/4″. I guess if it’s not enough, I’ll get some better taps later.

Riveted together aft bulkheads F-707 thru F-710. Well, F-709 doesn’t really need any riveting, and the others are simple. I started working on F-711, which is slightly more complicated.

I was down for most of the weekend, but started feeling better today. The weather was cooperating, so I prepped and primed the aft bulkhead parts. That wiped out what little energy I had.

I caught the bug that my daughter had last week, so I’ve been laying low. I did manage to do a little bit of deburring on the baggage ribs.