Friday, April 29, 2016

Riveted the left leading edge - 5 hours

I finally managed a good long day. Getting home early from work, I was ready to rivet the left leading edge. First order of business before riveting was to remove the primer from the stall warner bracket to allow a good ground for the wiring. The dremmel tool made easy work of it.

Then I began to cleco the leading edge assembly together. Never an easy task to get the nose ribs in and clecoe'd up as everything is a nice snug fit. Slow and easy is key, A tap here and a tap there. At one point I removed all the celco's and re-cleco'd

I started the first couple of rivets with the 4" no hole squeezer but I had a tough time getting rivets to squeeze nice and straight so I was drilling out a few rivets and re-setting them. I then switched over to the bucking bar. It's been quite a long time since I have bucked rivets so again...drilling out a few here and there. After about 20 rivets then I began to hit my stride. I did as much as I could, but found that I was having trouble setting the rivets in the nose as the curved surface was making it difficult to get the gun to stay in place. Not wanting to wreck anything I stopped and decided to wait for another day when I could have a bucking partner to help with setting the rivets.