Began assembling Aileron brackets - 2 hours

I gathered up the nerve to assemble the aileron brackets. I was dreading this step as I find driving the bigger, longer rivets at bit of a pain (more about the difficulty in drilling and removing rivets out of really thick material).

Well....I decided to jump in. Surprisingly everything when extremely well. First step was to set the AN426 flush rivets using the pneumatic squeezer.


Next I needed to set the AN470AD-11 rivets. Now this is where I was getting nervous. I find setting the AD470 rivets a bit more tough with squeezer as it is a tad tricky to ensure you are dead straight with the dies. (Dead straight results in great rivets....while if you are slightly off, it increases changes of a slightly slumped rivet head). It turns out that my squeezer just did not have enough power to set those AD4-11 rivets. So I pulled out my alligator squeezer. After some test pieces....Bam! Turns out it does an amazing job!



Since a few folks seem to have some questions on how the rivets are oriented on the hinge brackets, here is a few views of how I did mine.

Primed the aileron brackets, Prep'd flap parts for priming - 5 hours

I started the day off with acid etching all of the aileron bracket parts including the flap ribs. I set up and gave them all a coat of primer. I was careful not to get a thick coat on the aileron bracket parts, just a very thin coat. Have to make sure they fit together nice and still have holes line up.

Another big job was to start prepping the flap skins for priming. Lots of time taken in taking plastic off the flap skins and deburring. I managed to prep the right flap.

Re-drilled new flap ribs - 5 hours

I had rush shipped new flap ribs so that I could carry on with a big build this long weekend.So one of the big jobs was to re-assemble the flaps and begin the process of match drilling the parts. Learning from past experience. It takes a lot of care not to enlarge a hole that has already been match drilled. So it was a lengthy process, but in the end it worked out well.

I also deburred and dimpled all of the new rib holes (with the proper dies this time) and it turned out perfect.

Even more fitting and match drilling aileron brackets - 4 hours

One of the last items that I need to do is complete the rivets in the far outboard end of the wing (top skin). My compact wing stand did not allow me to reach these rivets in the stand, so I need to do them off the stand but before I begin to attach the aileron hinge bracket. So I made short work of the right wing.

 

Now that the right wing was ready, I started to match drill the aileron brackets to the wing. I really wanted to avoid getting aluminum shavings into the wings, so I used some scrap cardboard to direct shavings away.


 
 I also fitted the aileron stiffener S.B.
 

Another item on the to-do list was to address a bucking bar mark on the wing spar. A small mark was made accidentally when the bucking bar slipped while riveting, the mark was small and did not have an  edge, but the anodizing was scratched. So in the interests of maintaining corrosion protection, I removed the rivet, buffed the spot out with scotchbrite and primed it. Was it necessary....no, but I feel good that I did something with it.

More fitting the aileron brackets - 2 hours

So one of the things I noticed straight away when fitting the brackets to the wing is that the pieces actually made contact with the top skin rivets at the rear spar. It just didn't sit right with me that they made contact. I felt that there should be just a little bit of clearance between them. Also I noticed that the angle supports need to be slightly rounded to follow the inside radius of the rear spar so that they sit flush.

First step I rounded the support angle top edge to the inside radius of the rear spar. Then I refit the assembly. The clearance from the skin rivet is still there. So I very carefully used the scotchbrite wheel and removed about 1/32" of material where contact was being made. I did not want to remove too much and compromise strength or introduce stress points.
 

 
In the end the fit was perfect

Fitting the aileron brackets - 2 hours

Not a huge day, but I managed to fit up the aileron hinge brackets. It was fairly easy to figure out the correct parts, but it took a bit of head scratching to figure out where exactly the flush rivet heads go. Of course I was warned out some confusion when reading some of the gotchas on the forums. I think I psych'd myself out a bit with the forums. But in the end, if you read the plans and CAREFULLY read the small plans addendum that van's gives you on the hinge, then it all falls into place.



Once I had everything marked out, I cleaned off all the shear marks. I also cut up the aileron hinge stiffener and cleaned up the edges. Since I had the bandsaw out, I cut up the aileron stiffeners and cut up the rough shape.

Began assembly of flaps - 2 hours

 Since the most inboard flap ribs where all primed, it was time to start riveting the assembly together.I started with setting the nutplate onto the rib. Then, came setting the doubler on the rib. All in all it went pretty smoothly and I was pleased with the results.



So I wanted to get going on the flap assembly and prime the rest of the parts. One item that needs to be done is to prep and dimple the parts before priming. (With the self-etching primer, dimpling after priming has a tenancy to flake the primer off). I dove in and started dimpling, but I noticed after I was done that I had the male tank dimple die in the squeezer with the regular female die. So i changed out the male die and re-dimpled thinking it was no big deal.

Well low and behold.... I have cracks in my dimples for flap ribs #2 thru #6 both sides. Crappy! Time to order new parts.