Tuesday, September 1, 2015

Elevator assembly - We're Back!! - 4 hours

I spent a bunch of time this evening on the elevators. I hit a groove and just kept going. I started in on riveting the elevator hinge doublers/reinforcement plates with the AN470AD4-6 rivets. everything went well. I used my handy table that I made to provide the settings of the pneumatic squeezer for a given die/yoke setup. Using my digital calipers I can zero in the proper setting on the adjustable set holder and then squeeze the rivet. The result is a near perfect rivet set with only a small adjustment needed now and then.
 I moved onto the nutplates. I was very sure to go slow and be certain that I was square. I'm extremely pleased with the rivets.

 Like I said I was on a roll so I started riveting the spar and the ribs. This time around...I modified my sequence of riveting slightly from the plans. I began by setting the rivets between the E-702 spar and the E-704 counterbalance rib. 
 I then riveted the E-703 end rib to the E-702/704 assembly. It was slow work but the result is that I was able to rivet everything with the pneumatic squeezer with excellent shop heads!