Saturday, May 21, 2016

Even more tank prep - 7 hours

A big day at it finally!! I finished up preping the odds and ends with the nylon wheel.
I finished the tank access stiffeners and the outboard rib stiffeners.




One important item that I wanted to take care of was ensuring that all of the tank nose ribs where cleaned up had proper rib flange faceting as noted in the Van's manual. Darin, another local builder had warned me how important this was to have a clean and smooth leading edge. So I was very diligent to not be cavalier with this step.
I used files (flat and round) to take down the sharp edges and them smoothed them with scotchbrite on the 3M wheel.  

I then deburred all the holes in the ribs. This is not an easy process. Accessibility to the flange rivet holes is fine, but getting to the inside is another story. The leading edge ribs are not fun as the tight fit/clecos have a tenancy to make more pronounced burrs that don't come off easily. I ended up using a combination of a light deburr and a once over with  scotchbrite on the dremel to ensure no burrs.
Finally I was ready to dimple the ribs with the tank dies.


Then it was the same process on the stiffeners. Clean, deburr, nylon wheel, dimple.