Sunday, September 1, 2019

Started assemble of the Center Section - 4 hours


Well...Quite the interesting day on the build. Learned a lesson today.

I cleco’d the ribs spar and rib doubler together and drove a rivet. Set beautifully. Then I noticed that I couldn’t fit the next rivet in the hole above. The doubler shifted a bit during riveting and the cleco’s didn’t hold it enough to stop the movement. Since I couldn’t move the doubler (it was so tight), I toyed with the idea of drilling out the hole. But that would likely oblong the hole. I decided to drill out the rivet, which turned out to be very tricky. I ended up oblong the hole in the doubler. Crap!

Ok, Made a new doubler. Started riveting it....Soon realized It wasn’t 100% perfect. The AN3 bolts didn't want to slide into place. Drilled out two rivets now. Had to make a third doubler. Slid the AN3 bolts in, cleco’d it. Started riveting, but first rivet slumped bad. Drilled it out again. Set it again. Better! But not perfect, Crap! Well it sucks, but I decided not to do anything more with it as it will make it worse. All in all, its the only questionable rivet in the entire session, the rest are all set well so, I'll let this slide.  


Rest of the rivets went very well.

But after I was done I found out I had drilled the AN3 holes in the doubler upside down. The fit is perfect, the only thing it did is it put the long side of the doubler toward the bottom rather than towards the top. So yup...This is the boo boo that gives the plane character. Nobody will know about it unless you are one of the few people that read this blog. Stings, but I will get over it.

The rest of the riveting went extremely well. Go figure. Used both the double offset rivet set, and the super long set with a bucking partner.