New tools arrived

Finally after waiting nearly two months my order from Avery Tools had arrived. Back in Nov 8th I placed a fairly big order since Avery Tools was going out of business. I ordered a tandem alligator squeezer, a pneumatic cleco gun, a larger selection of flat rivet dies in various thicknesses, SafeAir pitot mast and skyview plumbing kit. I was super excited that it was finally here.   

The cleco gun is nice, first impressions is that it will come in extremely handy for work on the skins. I gave the new squeezer a try. It has tons of power and a bit better trigger than my C frame squeezer. I can see that it will not be as easy to adjust the dies for setting rivets, and it will be a tad tricky to make sure that it sets rivets straight, but it sure is cool!

Primed the Rear Spar - 2.5hrs

Not much to report. I prep'd and primed all the rear spar parts.

Working on Mike's Stewart S-51

Mike came over this evening to work on his HS rear spar for his Stewart S-51. He had a look oever my work and I ran through some of my work. It was nice to get his eyes on my work to verify if I am doing things right.

Prep'd the rear spars - 6 hours

Learning from previous experience, I match drilled the rear spar doublers to the rear spar with the drill press. progress was a bit slow, but it was precise.
 
I then transferred the aileron holes to the doublers. As per the instructions I used a unibit to remove as much material as I could. I then tried to use files to finish the holes but progress was extremely slow and I had much material to still remove. I dug out the dremmel with a small sanding drum which worked excellent. At first it removes a lot of material, but as the drum wears down so does its ability to remove material allowing you to easily fine tune the cuts.


As soon as I was close enough, I cleco'd the doublers to the rear spars and very carefully used the dremmel to match finish the holes.
I drilled and de-burred the parts.

Completed tie-downs and started rear spars - 6 hours

I began riveting the nutplates on the tie-down assembly. It went fairly smooth and I am happy with how it turned out. I now see why the use of compact nutplates is not mainstream. Not the easiest to rivet...not impossible,  just no room to work with. My friend later told me that a trick he uses is to use a punch and a back-rivet plate to set them. Good Idea!


I then bolted them to the spars with little incident. I wet set the bolts with primer on the shank. I did notice that one hole was a bit tough to screw in due to the one nutplate being tight. I will have to account for this when torquing.

I then began to trim the rear spar doublers. I sketched the dimensions shown on the plans out on a piece of paper and then transferred to the one doubler. I cut the doubler and used the sanding station to fine tune the piece. I then used that one double to transfer all the cut markings to the other pieces. I then trimmed all the other pieces. Once nearly complete, I cleco'd the pieces together and then finished them with the scotch brite wheel. They are all a perfect match.

Completed tie down spacers - 2 hours

The nutplates and AN4 bolts and washers arrived from Aircraft Spruce yesterday. So I set off to complete the Tie-downs. I figured that the compact MK1000-4 was the best nutplate for the AN4 bolt with the spacer out of all the various nutplates that I ordered. I drilled the holes and de-burred them. I then cleaned the parts and then primed them.

Almost finished Tie-Down Spacers - 1.5 hours

Spent a little time completing the countersinks for the flush rivets in the tie-down spacers. I have to wait for the selection of nutplates from Aircraft Spruce to arrive before I can finish.

I then completed the riveting on the K1000-4 nutplates on the ends of the wing spars.