RV-9A Wing Construction Log

Saturday, January 17, 2004

Flap work...

I visited Ray's project today... didn't feel like jumping into my own project... so go visit someone elses!! It actually did the trick. I came back from his place all charged up and got a lot done.

I drilled the trailing edge of the right flap and then dimpled the skins. Then I started on the left flap by riveting on the top and nose skins and getting about half of the bottom skins done. Riveting the bottom skins to the spar is murder on the hand holding the bucking bar.

I think i have found a good way of riveting the nose/top skin onto the spar. Van's says to put it in the cradle and rivet it that way and we all know how that went for me. Here's what I did on the left spar today.

1) Cleco the nose skins, top skin and spar together. Cleco the skin to the ribs using the holes that match the ones in your table.
2) Flip the skin over, top side down. Weight the whole flap down.
3) Use your 1" flush set and the square bucking bar. I polished one face and then taped a popsicle stick so it keeps the bucking bar sitting flat.
4) Insert rivet in hole from bottom with one hand.. grab the end with the other hand and hold on.
5) Put rivet gun on rivet to hold it hole.
6) Move bucking bar in place.
7) RIVET.

This works pretty good. You may have to take the spring off the flush set to get it to sit close enough.

I also back riveted the ribs to the top skin using my c-set and the back-rivet plate. This also turned out well.

Setup for riveting the top skin
Using the c-set on the ribs.

(Time: 5 hours)

- posted by Matthew @ 9:45 PM