RV-9A Wing Construction Log

Saturday, November 29, 2003

Left wing top skins complete!!

I lucked out today and got a call from Bill Gill who was looking for something to do. :-) (Actually a student of his cancelled and he was in the area, asked if I needed help riveting.) Sandi reluctantly gave permission for him to help out. :-)

After checking a 3rd time to make sure the wing was true and didn't have any twist, Sandi had the honors of riveting the first set of rivets and then Bill and I jumped in. 6 hours later we finished! The first round went fairly quickly since I already had the rivets in place and taped. A lot of time is consumed just putting in the rivets and taping them.

Sandi's mom and dad come over to the house so I enlisted her dad (Chuck) to help out a little. He helped pull out cleco's, remove the tape while Bill and I continued to rivet.

TIP #1: Pay attention to the rivet call-outs. It's easy to put in the wrong rivets.

TP #2: Leave out the j-stringers until the end like the plans call for. My wing stand setup prevented me from sliding them in after the skins were riveted on, so I had them in the whole time. There are a set of rivets that are hard to drive if the stringers are in. Fortunatly I had a C-set for the rivet gun that we were able to use.

TIP #3: I think the traditional method of driving rivets is your best choice. I bought the 10" avery back rivet set. The problem is that there isn't enough of a bend in the tip. The shop heads had a tendency to lay over a bit. I won't use it on the right wing. Bill and I did a perfect rivet job with a 1" flush set and bucking bars. You can't tell the difference between the back-riveted ones over the flush set ones.

Chuck on the left watching while I drive rivets.
Bill buck'n the rear spar rivets.
Chuck helping with cleco's and tape.

Top skins on!!

(Time: 6 hours)

- posted by Matthew @ 6:30 PM