Dave’s RV-7A Building Log

Deburred the stiffener holes on the left elevator skin.

Started riveting the rudder skins to the skeleton. Discovered that I had made a mistake a while back. I forgot to dimple the two holes on the front side of the top rudder rib. I wish I had noticed that before I riveted it to the spar. Luckily, I was able to pivot it out to the point where I could get the dimple dies on it and fix the problem.

I also had a problem getting some of the holes to line up perfectly. Some of the rivets were sitting crooked when I dropped them in. I borrowed a trick I read somewhere and re-dimpled both the skin and the rib together on the problem holes. That fixed it great. I’m about 1/3 done on riveting the rudder skins to the skeelton.

The replacement screws and nuts for the rudder counterweight showed up. I ordered them Saturday and they showed up Wednesday via FedEx Ground. Not bad. Van’s only charged a few bucks handling and a few bucks freight. I probably could have found them locally, but didn’t want to waste the time running around.

After staring at a few of the rivets on the rudder reinforcement plates a while longer, I decided I still didn’t like the lookes of them even after redoing them once already. I took some advice from the Yahoo RV7 list and bumped up the pressure to 100 psi. The gauge that came with the tank definitely needs to be replaced. It varies +/- 5 psi for no reason. The higher pressure along with concentrating on lining up the squeezer better produced very good results. I’m happy with all of the rivets on the reinforcement plates now.

I attached the rudder counterweight with the new hardware and then clecoed the rudder skins onto the spar. The instructions are pretty good about spelling out the steps. There are 9 rivets in the skin per side that must be set before putting on the top rib. Did that, but didn’t get any further. Somebody had a piano recital tonight (and she did great).

This shot shows that I had to make the slot in the skin a little bit larger in order to provide some space around the rudder horn.

Deburred the holes in the elevator stiffeners. Dimpled the holes in the stiffeners. Did I mention there are a lot of stiffeners? I had some help, though.

More fun with stiffeners. I drilled all of the stiffeners to the elevator skins. I also drilled the trim cover plate reinforcement to the skin.

Started on the elevators! Rough cut all of the stiffeners with the band saw (could have used snips, but the band saw is so quick). Cleaned up the cuts with the belt sander and then smoothed all of the edges with the Scotch-brite wheel. There sure are a lot of stiffeners. The picture on the left shows how they start out. Keep in mind that each pile in the right-hand picture is 4 to 7 stiffeners.

Julie had some time to help me, so we riveted up the VS. I squeezed the rivets at the top and bottom edges. I’m leaving the rear spar just clecoed until the technical advisor comes by. It’s so cool to get another component done.

Riveted on the rudder horn. I’m not too proud to use pop rivets. This is not an area where it matters, and it’s very difficult to get a yoke in there.

Riveted on the counterweight skin with the handy thin nose yoke. (It’s out of focus, but there is also some overspray contributing to the fuzziness. I primed the outside of the skin where it is overlapped by the rudder skins.)

Attached the lead weight. Had to do some minor trimming of the weight in order to make it fit around the rivet heads that are now present.

I also screwed up using the torque wrench. The bolts holding on the counterweights are AN509’s, so I stupidly used the torque value for AN5 bolts. They’re actually AN3 sized “structural screws.” After way over-torquing these bolts, I’m going to order some new ones. That puts a halt on further rudder progress for a while. Bummer. At least it should be a cheap part to replace.

While I’m waiting for Julie to help me on the VS, I decided to work on the rudder a bit. Started by back-riveting the stiffeners to the skins. After reading other builders’ logs, I was being extra careful not to rivet beyond my relatively small back-riveting plate. Still, I managed to do it on the second stiffener. After that point, I used a piece of blue tape to indicate where I needed to stop. It’s too easy to get wrapped up in riveting and not notice when you’ve gone to far. Back riveting rocks. Goes fast and looks great. I had some help from some little fingers with those tiny 3-3 rivets.

This shows the riveting of the last hole and then one of the finished skins. In the first picture, note that I routed a recess in a piece of plywood for the back-riveting plate. Took a while to do that with my cranky old router, but the end result works great. No chance of scratching the skin on the edge of the plate.

Started working on the rudder skeleton. For some reason, I had a hard time with the rivets on the reinforcement plates. They kept squeezing over to the side. Had to drill out several. And then drill out two again. Very frustrating. It was tough getting to the rivets right next to the lower spar flanges. First I tried shooting the rivets. That was a disaster. Drilled them out and then discovered the longeron/flange yoke could just barely reach them.

Riveted together the VS rear spar. Riveted the ribs to the front spar. Clecoed the skin to the partial skeleton. It’s great to be putting stuff together again.

I had to drill out a couple of rivets that squeezed too much to the side. I’m doing better than on the HS, but still having this problem. I’m sure it will get better with experience. I’m definitely good at drilling out rivets.