Trimmed (including deburring and radiusing the corners) the ends of the horizontal stabilizer so that the elevator would swing clear. I bent some 10d nails at a right angle to use as temporary pins for the elevator hinges.
I can now finish up all of the parts, since they’ve been looked over by an EAA Technical Counselor. I was leaving the last spar unriveted on each component in case he wanted to look inside.
I riveted on the rear spar to the horizontal stabilizer. It’s now finished. Well, except for the fiberglass tips, which I’ll do at the end.
Julie helped me knock out the rest of the rivets in the field of the HS today. I cleco’ed on the rear spar, and squeezed the rivets around the outside, except for the rear spar rivets. I want the EAA Technical Advisor to be able to look inside the HS, so I’ll leave the rear spar until after he comes by.
I was pretty successful with the squeezer. I had to drill out the first rivet I set, but was more careful after that. You just need to make sure the squeezer is parallel with the rivet. Since I just received the no-hole/thin-nose yoke Friday, I used that for the rivets way in the leading edge. I then left it on and did all of the rest of the rivets with it. That’s a pretty handy yoke.
Very cool to have the HS basically done.
Finished riveting the left side HS. Started on the right side. From Dan C’s site, I got a tip to put duct tape on the corners of the bucking bar. That kept it from marring the neighboring ribs. I also read on the rv-list that putting riveting tape over the heads will keep the surface from getting marred. Both tips worked great. Marring the surface is not a big deal, since I plan on painting the plane in the end. I just want it to look the best it can while it hangs from the rafters for months. I also ordered a swivel mushroom rivet set with a rubber guard. That will help too.
We’re riveting! With Julie’s helped we did all of the field (i.e. can’t reach with a squeezer) rivets on the bottom side of the left HS. It took a fair amount of monkeying with air pressure and the regulator at the gun in order to get the right combo. We used 80# at the compressor outlet and about 1/2 closed on the gun regulator. We practiced a bit on a piece of scrap until Julie felt she had the timing down pretty good. She generally would shoot for 3 seconds. And then I’d signal whether it needed another 1/2 second by visually looking at it. And then I’d follow up with the gauge after a whole line was done.
The rivets turned out better than I expected. It wasn’t nearly as hard as I thought it was going to be. I did have to drill out one rivet. I let the bucking bar slip off the shop head. Julie was so understanding, “It’s nobody’s fault.”
I had a tough time getting even the small bucking bar into the small space inside the HS. I ended up polishing a spot on the side of the bucking bar–easily done with the grinder followed by Scotch-brite.
We also shot the two 470AD4 rivets that hold the 702 and 706 together, per the instructions. That took more adjustments with the rivet gun, since they’re a bigger rivet. It was also hard for Julie to keep the gun on the round head (vs. the flat heads with the 426AD3 rivets on the skin). She did a great job, though.
Big day. It’s starting to look like a real airplane part!!
Touched up the primer on a few of the HS ribs. In the last priming session, I didn’t hit the ends very well on a few of the ribs. I also primed the inside of the skins. I was planning on using the self-etch primer and just doing the rivet lines. However, since I had the HVLP sprayer set up, it wasn’t much extra trouble to prep and spray them with the water-based one-part epoxy primer. The session went much better than with the touch-up sprayer. I couldn’t tell how much paint I needed to put on, and got it a little thick in a few places–a few runs.
Deburred the edges of the other HS skin. Flattened out the hole I accidentally punched in the skin when I was dimpling with the C-frame a few days ago. After flattening it, I dimpled the right hole.
I also set up some scrap pieces for practicing riveting with the rivet gun. The rivet gun isn’t working real consistently yet. Seems like a lot of oil is spurting out of it. Maybe it just needs to be run for a while.
Deburred the edges on one of the HS skins. That went pretty fast with the Scotch-brite wheel. I touched up the corners a little bit with a fine file.
Called Van’s builder’s assistance line this morning. They said the extra hole is not a problem. Just dimple the correct hole and put in a rivet. When I go to paint the plane, I can fill in the hole with putty.
Another screw up. I was dimpling along with the C-frame dimpler trying to wrestle with the HS skin, and I didn’t notice that the skin popped off of the pin on the dimple die. Made a nice hole right next to the real hole. Kind of a figure 8. I’ll call Van’s and find out what the solution is. I don’t want to start over with that skin. It’s almost ready to go. Unfortunately, the mistake is on the top of the HS.
It was a productive night however. I finished dimpling both HS skins. After the screw-up, I got some help from Julie to do the holes that are way inside the crease of the skin. I also looked over the spars and drilled out a few rivets that squeezed way over to the side. I re-squeezed them and they look much better now.
I just need to smooth the edges of both HS skins, prime the rivet lines, and I’m ready for some riveting!!