Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Riveted HS#2 00005 & 00006 ribs to Spar - 3 hours



A bit of a frustrating evening. Riveted on the HS-00005 and 00006 ribs to the front spar. After my first empennage leaving these ribs off for the Canadian Inspection makes it extremely tough to rivet after pre-close. I decided to install the rivets now and I will not rivet the skin to HS-00006 if the inspector wants to check the rivets inside the HS.
I tried to squeeze as many of the rivets as I could. It's slow and painful. However I had to buck half of them as the longeron yoke was not able to catch them all. It's a bit difficult as I had to buck the rivets and I haven't bucked in some time, so I'm a tad rusty. I bent the ribs out of the way enough to allow using the straight rivet set. (I really wish I had a long rivet set for this). The first few were good. The last couple where not. Had to drill out and try again, and again. Fortunately my rivet removal techniques are top notch and when punching out the rivets with my handy tools the holes are left in excellent condition. I was finally able to set the last tricky rivet. Then I had to go and buff the ribs and re-prime where the tools scuffed the original primer off. Lots of frustration tonight but I got the job done well.