Building tools

A handy tip that I learned from one of the guys at the EAA meeting is to build some guides for both drilling operations and rivet removal operations. A little drill guide using a piece of round bar with either a #30, or #40 hole is a handy tool that ensures that when drilling a hole with a hand held drill, the drill bit is perpendicular to the piece. If you can have a tab welded to the side it will allow you to have a place to use a clamp on it.

A similar guide is great for using under a piece when you need to use a punch to remove a rivet.  The trick is to have a hole in the tool that is just slightly larger than the shop rivet head. If you ever need to punch the rivet out, the tool used would support the aluminum around the rivet and is helps you avoid bending the aluminum while driving out a particularly stubborn rivet.

I had ordered a few round bar pieces last week. All were 2" long and I got some 1" diameter and some 1-1/2" diameter. In retrospect....the 2" length is just too long.

I think I will re-order some pieces that 1" long and get some 1" dia, and 1-1/4" diameter. and use those as my drill guides. (Update....This is an excellent size 1" diameter and 1" long. Drill some on center, and some off to one side. The ones drilled off to the side come in handy for those tight areas)

I decided to use my 2" x 1-1/2"dia piece to make a guide for punching out AD4-X rivets. Driving these rivets out of the thick spar doublers has been a cause of much frustration for me. Hopefully this tool will safe grief for me in the future. I started out by marking center on a piece. I then set up the drill press and made a pilot hole with a small 1/16" bit.

 I then enlarged the hole with a 15/64" bit. Turns out that this hole size will allow removal of both a AD4-X and AD5-X rivet.

Time to get organized...More

I decided to take some time and get some organizing done. First thing I wanted to do is color code all my dies and tools according to size. I notice that often I waste time double checking sizes, and I dread the day that I use the wrong size on an important part. I raided my wife and daughters nail polish and went to work. I then made an excel spread sheet to list the colors to the sizes as a quick reference.

Odds and Ends - 2 hours

I asked Mike a friend of mine over to give me a hand with the rudder. Mike has way more experience than me and he suggested perhaps trying to set the rivet with a Cleveland Tools Big Squeeze. He says that he prefers it over a pneumatic squeezer as it allows him to control the squeezing of the rivet, and also allows him to stop squeezing if the rivet is starting to bend or shift. He says that's its slower, but he finds that he likes it way more. Mike suggested that we give it a try on the stubborn rivet I have on the rudder.

Well what can I say...It worked exactly as he described. We slightly bent the top tab of the rudder spar to help with accessibility. I held the rudder and a flashlight as Mike works the Big Squeeze. The rivet was perfectly set!

We then worked a bit on the Vertical Stabilizer to drill out some of the oops rivets that I had used on it. Originally I used a 4-3.5 oops rivet to replace a 3-3.5 rivet which is incorrect. I needed to use a longer oops rivet length due to the oops rivet having a larger diameter shank diameter. While removing a rivet, I bent one of the tabs on the rib where it attaches to the front spar. No big deal, I pulled out my 3145 RTV adhesive and put a dab on the tab. I then clamped it and I am waiting for it to dry. This will allow the tab to sit back tight against the spar until I can set a rivet through it.

Mike has some really great tips and is an inspiration to get building again.

Rudder Assembly Ongoing - 3.5 hours

I decided to put some work into assembling the rudder. I can only rivet one side of the skins so that the MD-RA can inspect it before I closed it up. All in all, the skins when on extremely nice and I cleco'd the trailing edge on. I set up the squeezer and I set the majority of rivets on the rudder. All in all it went really well. I ended up having to drill out and re-set 3 rivets that I was not happy with. One rivet at the very top gave me quite a bit of brain damage. I set too short a rivet (not paying attention). So I drilled it out to #30 and tried to set an oops rivet but it started to bend. So I drilled out the oops rivet. Time to think...I might need to buck this rivet as I do not want to risk bending it and having to drill it out again.

Rudder assembly ongoing - 3.5 hours

I started off with dimpling the rudder skins and the counterbalance rib and skin. Then I started in setting the two rivets on either side of the bottom nut plate. I just was not pleased as the head was angled and I chose to try again. Of course since the material was so thick getting the rivet out was impossible without drilling it out. Now the holes where too large. So I opted to go up a rivet size (to #5) and used a #21 drill on the hole. Well..after measuring the edge distance from the reinforcement plate to the center of the hole is 0.241"....closer than the minimum recommendation for the rivet size. Crap! Well time to reason it out. The edge distance issue only exists on the thicker reinforcement plate so I might be ok...I will send an email to Van's and double check if all is good (I will also get confirmation of the oblong hole on the HS from my Dec 22/14 build day) . I decided to forge ahead with setting the remaining rivets.

I then riveted the counterbalance rib onto the spar and then cleco'd/riveted the counterbalance skin. I need to order a set of 120deg 1/8"dies for the CS4-4 pop rivets before I can proceed any further on the rudder.  

Started Rudder assembly - 2.5 hours

Not wanting to face the bitter cold in the garage, I decided to dig out my small air compressor and set up in the basement. I managed to log a few hours with the assembly of the rudder. I dimpled the spar and then set the rivets on the reinforcement plates and nutplates. I finished the top two reinforcement plates and started the bottom one.

HS Complete (well almost) - 4.5 hours

On a bit of a roll from yester day, I set out to complete the horizontal stabilizer. With the lessons learned, I made relatively short work of it. The process of yesterday was repeated and overall everything went excellent. I think if memory serves me, I only used two opps rivets on the right side (I think only one on the left side).  I'm very pleased with the riveting....I am feeling quite comfortable with it now and notice that its best with the bucking bar in my left hand, and the rivet gun in the right.

A setting of 1.5 on my rivet gun with a "1 mississippi" count yields a near perfect set rivet for a -3 rivet. A setting of 3 with the same count is near perfect for a -4 rivet. I am beginning to "hear" when the rivet is set. There is no doubt now that I think I have turned a bit of a corner with the riveting.....Much to my relief.

The horizontal stabilizer is now complete (well with the rear spar, HS0005 and HS0006 not installed to allow for the MD-RA inspection.