Sunday, May 15, 2011

May 15, 2011

4 Hours

Still have to finish riveting the skin to the spar for the right HS.

Finished riveting the bottom of the right HS.

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Finished bucking the right HS skin to the spar. Riveted the skin to the main ribs. Rivet the outboard rib into place to finish the right HS assembly.

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Finally have a component that looks like part of an aircraft.

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Start the left HS assembly. Put the skin in the cradle, add the nose ribs in the proper locations and rivet. Had to drill out one rivet on the nose because it swelled between the skin and rib. Also had to drill out one of the ones I squeezed on the inboard rib - got twisted before I squeezed it.

PAY ATTENTION!!!! Make sure the work area is suitable and the angles/setup works!

Rivet the #2 and #4 ribs to the forward spar assembly. Install the spar into the skin and cleco the skin to the spar and ribs.

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Starting to look like something!

Saturday, May 14, 2011

May 14, 2011

2 hours

Drilled out rivets in inboard main rib and re-riveted.

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Marked skins with proper rivets since Vans specifies 3 different rivet sizes - -3.5 for ribs to skins, -4 for skins to spars and -4.5 for skin/rib/spar.

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Started riveting skin to spar. About 1/2 done.

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Next - finish riveting skin to spar. Rivet main ribs to spar. Save outboard rib for last do make bucking easier.

Friday, May 6, 2011


9:34 PM

8 Hours

Took a day off to work on the plane.


Finished dimpling the left HS skin. Dimpled the main and nose ribbed. Deburred the skin edges.


Needed some unwaxed cups for mixing the primer but couldn't find any. Need to go to an actual auto paint store I guess.


I really want to get on to riveting the stab together, so I needed to prime.


Yesterday I picked up the cheap/nice HVLP gun at Harbor Freight aircraft supply. This thing actually works pretty well. There are 3 knobs that control feed rate, air and pattern. I definitely need a lot of practice before I can do anything useful, but at least I was able to spray the primer and it came out reasonably decent.


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At the moment I'm using the Akzo Nobel 2-part epoxy primer from Aircraft Spruce.


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People that have used it seem to like it. It goes on pretty easily and sets up very quickly. I'll have to see how durable it is when I rivet.


The part I don't like is it is pretty nasty chemically, and thins/cleans with MEK, which I'm not wild about. Got a 3M respirator that worked well and used gloves and such (like about 6 pairs).


Here's what the end result was after I messed around a make a cheapie place to spray in the garage, spent about 4 hours scuffing/washing/drying all the parts.


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Here's what they look like after I finally sprayed them this evening after wiping them down with Acetone one last time.


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