Decided to spend a little time out in the garage tonight; I’d like to be able to get these skeleton parts primed this weekend if possible, which means I need to get deburring, dimpling, and other prep done before then. And about half of tomorrow is out because I have to attend a CAF meeting down in Peachtree City.
Anyway, things were pretty straightforward. I got comfortable in my Official Deburring Chair and started going to town on the skeleton parts. Once all the holes were taken care of, along with the nooks and crannies where the bench grinder can’t get to, I moved on to the aforementioned grinder to take care of the edges of everything. Once I’d finished that, I was about an hour in. Next up: Dimpling. Again, no worries here; I went to town on the spar, ribs, and the short rear spar for the left elevator, E-606PP. This piece closes off the trailing edge of the elevator where the trim tab mounts.
Of course, just as I was thinking how productive I was being, I found out I’d done something dumb. I’d actually decided to stop for the night and go spend some time with Josie, but before I went in, I wanted to read ahead in the directions a bit. Just a couple steps ahead, there was instruction to the effect of “Machine countersink the top flange of E-606PP and dimple the bottom flange.” Hmmm, I just got done dimpling both flanges. Why would it need to be countersunk anyway?
Oh, wait. The hinge piece for the trim tab sits on that top flange. Hence the countersink instead of dimpling, to give the hinge a flat surface to rest against. ARGH!
At first, I tarted to go ahead and try to fix my mistake. I figured I could use the rivet gun with flush set and the back rivet plate to flatten those dimples back out. But then I got to thinking some more…first, if the dimples didn’t get flattened thoroughly, how would the countersinks turn out? For that matter, how might that combination of flattening and countersinking possible affect those holes? Hmm, alternative idea: Maybe I could leave the dimples there, an countersink the hinge itself so the dimples would sit inside. Drilling the hinge piece in place might be a little more challenging, but I wouldn’t risk ruining E-606PP.
Bottom line, though, I got to this point by getting ahead of myself and working without thinking. Trying to figure out in a flash how to fix my mistake was liable to end up with me compounding that mistake, so I decided to leave things as they were, quit for the night, and seek the advice of the hive mind at VAF. So we’ll see if there’s an issue with my idea of countersinking the hinge that I didn’t think of.
Oh, I also did another time lapse tonight. I figured it might be amusing to have footage of me going through the drudgery of deburring. I even added some amusingly boring music this time.