Short version: the first major assembly of my RV is DONE!

First task of the day was to get the front spar blind riveted to the HS-707 and -708 ribs.  Easy enough, then it was on to riveting the front spar to the skin, followed by the HS-708 main rib.  Not too bad here either; I’m starting to get a pretty good feel for bucking rivets without a lot of hit-check-hit some more-check again-etc.  I did get a little overconfident though…had a couple of bad rivets, but I’m also getting pretty good at drilling out.  Not perfect though-I did have one hole I enlarged.  No worries though-I drilled out to #30 and dipped into my supply of oops rivets.

I also noticed a change in my attitude as I was working today.  Previously, if I fouled up a rivet or made some other mistake, I was prone to getting annoyed, stewing about it, beating myself up, and generally reacting in a nonproductive way.  Today, it was just businesslike: Bad rivet?  OK, drill it out and replace.  Instead of wasting time thinking about my foul-up, I’d fix it in five minutes and be on my way.

Anyway, with the front spar and main rib set, next step was to cleco the rear spar assembly in place, then rivet it and the visible ribs to the skin.  Nothing complex here, just a lot of squeezing.  (Side note: I played with a Cleaveland Tool “Main Squeeze” at Oshkosh.  Boy, I wish I’d had that thing today-makes squeezing so much easier…)  At this point, acording to the instructions, all I had left was to blind rivet the rear spar to the HS-708 main rib.  But there was still riveting left to do- the rear spar hadn’t been riveted to the HS-706 tip ribs.  Either I missed it in the instructions or it was left out…in any case, setting those four rivets was the last task to finish my stab!

Of course, this was where things went awry.  Since I had the squeezer out, I decided to squeeze these four rivets as well.  Yeah…squeezing -4 rivets is tough with full-strength hands, never mind hands that just got done squeezing probably 100+ -3 rivets.  The first two were passable, barely.  The last two were both totally jacked up.  To make matters worse, out of some sense of symmetry, I’d put the manufactured heads forward, where they were nearly impossible to access for drilling out.

After some head-scratching, I decided to get out my angle drill kit.  That let me get a decent shot at the heads, but it was impossible to tell if I was centered on the head.  I really didn’t want to foul up my holes on the home stretch…so I decided to drill out with a smaller (#40) bit to help avoid getting any of the rib/spar material.  This worked mostly like a charm-I didn’t damage any holes, though getting those rivets out was a bear.

Finally, I set those four rivets again, using the gun this time. Much better.  Then I sat back and realized that I had a completed horizontal stab sitting right in front of me.  Lots of false starts along the way, but I got past it all and finished a part!  Now on to the next part, and the next, and so on…there’s a lot left to build!

Squeezing rivets…over and over and over:

It’s DONE!

And now I have my first airplane part hanging from the ceiling:

Well, that hoped-for long evening in the garage didn’t really happen.  I was still able to get a bit done, but I was limited by my need for (and therefore availability of) a helping hand.

I started with riveting the HS-707 nose rib on the starboard side.  I wanted to try my alternate method of starting with the forwardmost rivet, but that didn’t work as well as I’d hoped.  Even clecoing only the hole just aft of that pesky bugger, the rib didn’t want to sit flush against the skin.  Oh well.  So i went back to what I did before and started at the back, working my way forward.  I made a brief try at shooting these rivets solo, which was a bad idea.  The angle meant that I’d have to shoot with my left hand and buck with my right.  First rivet went great, but I somehow set the second one with the shop head sticking a good bit out of the skin.  I suspect that I had a tendency to put too much pressure on the bucking bar and not enough on the rivet gun..so yeah, left-handed riveting is apparently not wise.  I got that SOB drilled out-thankfully without damaging the skin- and waited for help on the rest.  Once Josie was able to help, we got the rest of the nose rib rivets set.  It was again getting late by this time, so I decided to clean up, cleco the front spar in place, and leave the rest for tomorrow.  

We’re going to be out of town again this weekend, so I feel compelled to make the most of of the weekday nights.  I was a little bummed that I didn’t get more done tonight, but things are still coming together.  After a lot of head-banging, some ruined parts, and lots of steps forward and backward, I finally have something nearing a finished airplane part.

Josie grabbed a photo of me clecoing everything together so I could jump right back in tomorrow evening (I seem to be concentrating really hard!):

Went right back to work on the port stab today.  Over my lunch break, I made a run over to Harbor Freight Aviation Supply to see if they had a blind riveter with a smaller head.  Turns out they did.  Plus, the head also swivels, which might come in handy for some odd places in the future.  For $9, I think I can get my money’s worth out of the thing. 

Once I got home, a bit of experimenting confirmed that my new riveter would work just fine for the current task.  I recruited Josie to come hold the stab in a better working position, and the three blind rivets were set in no time.  Next step was to start riveting the HS-702 spar and HS-708 main rib.  This was by far the most flush rivets I’d set.  At first I had Josie helping me by bucking while I ran the gun, and we had a decent rhythm going.  But she wasn’t feeling totally great, and had even stayed home from work, so after about 30 minutes she (rather apologetically) went inside.  I found that the spar rivets weren’t too difficult to shoot solo, so I shot the rest of those myself.  I was able to get Josie back out to help with the rib rivets, which were a bit too awkward to comfortably shoot solo.

Out of all that, I only had one rivet that had to be drilled out; I apparently let the bucking bar slip and the shop head started to fold.  But I caught it early enough that it was easy to extract, and I didn’t damage my skin at all!

It was getting pretty late by this point, so as much as I would have loved to move right on to the starboard skin, it was quitting time.  I also would have merrily squeezed the rivets on the ends of the stab, but instructions have you leave these for last, once the rear spar is clecoed in place.  Not sure what the reason for this is, but I don’t have a good reason to depart from the instructions, so I won’t.

Tomorrow evening is free as well, and it’s a work-from-home day for me.  I’m hoping to get out in the garage early and get all these steps repeated on the starboard skin.  Once that’s done, I’ll pretty much be home-free on my first assembly!

Mostly-riveted port skin:

A nice little row of shop heads:

So here I am, freshly back from my first-ever (and certainly not last) trip up to Oshkosh, and it’s definitely time to get back to work.  A short confession before we get started here: some of the work described herein was done almost two weeks ago, but I didn’t do a post then mostly because I spent about 15 minutes in the garage and when I stopped, I was quite furious.

Anyways…when we left off before, all the h-stab skeleton prep was done and it was time to start skinning.  The first step in the instructions is to rivet the HS-707 nose rib to the top side of the skin.  That seemed straightforward at first: cleco in place, looks good, start riveting.  I started from the trailing edge end and moved forward, which in retrospect may have been a bad decision.  I had no problem keeping the skin pulled against the rib until I got to that last rivet on the leading edge.  Here, the skin is pulled into a more noticeable bend to sit against the rib, and without the cleco in place, the skin sat a good 1/2″ or so from the rib.  After some thinking, I clecoed the HS-708 rib to the HS-707 rib and clecoed both to the bottom side of the skin.  This pulled the skin tight against the rib, but also made for some tight quarters.  A little experimentation, and I had the bucking bar in place…I fired the rivet gun…crap, the shop head is clinching.  Drill-out time!

Ever mindful of the opportunity to damage my nice skin, I drilled carefully, popped the manufactured head off, and started trying to drive the shop head off.  Boy was it stubborn…and when I finally got it off, I realized my error of judgment.  With nothing to brace the rib flange, it had bent itself pretty severely.  Oh, and despite being careful, I’d enlarged the skin hole.  I expressed my frustration in some terms which shall not be repeated here, stomped out of the garage, and found something else to occupy me for the rest of the night.  That ended up being the last time I was in the garage pre-OSH as well, what with trip prep.

So tonight, I resolved to get past that pesky thing and move forward.  One important step here was to swallow my pride and get help.  I drove all the previous rivets solo, awkwardly holding the bucking bar and gun at arm’s length.  Which is kind of dumb when you have a lady around who’s expressed plenty of interest in helping.  So yeah, I took advantage of her services tonight.

After careful consideration, I decided that there still wasn’t any better way to pull the skin flush than to cleco the bottom side to the nose and main ribs, so I did that.  I then recruited my help to hold the bucking bar while I drove my first-ever “oops” rivet.  All in all, it was less stressful than I’d built it up to be.  Next, I clecoed the tip rib in place, and set about riveting the bottom side of the skin to HS-707.  Again, here having a helper was, well, helpful.  We got those rivet shot in no time.

Next step is to cleco the front spar in place and blind rivet HS-707 and -708 to the spar.  Seems easy, but oh wait…the only rivet puller I have is a cheapo unit from Lowes or something, and the head is huge.  No way to use it in the tight confines of the stab that I can see.  So I stopped for the night, and tomorrow I’ll see about finding a rivet puller that fits in tight spaces better.

(no pictures tonight, I’m afraid…)

Unfortunately, my cobuilder was a bit under the weather today, which put a bit of a damper on stuff I wanted to get done.  Still, I got all the remaining skeleton assembly and skin prep work done, so now it’s on to putting the skins on.

Skeleton work was pretty easy; the HS-810 and -814 reinforcements get riveted onto the HS-702 front spar channels, and then the HS-405 and -405 inner ribs are riveted onto the front spar.  This work went pretty quick.  I did foul up one rivet that I tried to squeeze, only to have it start to fold over, but I got it drilled out with no drama and just used the rivet gun on the rest.

After that, the skins still needed to be edge finished and dimpled.  Normally, I’d have a second pair of hands for this, but with them unavailable, I went at it alone.  That required a bit of creativity, but nothing too horrible.  I did, however, secure my place in the figure-eight club towards the end of the dimpling session.  I was nearly done when I whacked the C-frame and heard what I would describe as a nonstandard noise.  Yup, I made a new hole.

I went ahead and finished the other dimpling, then went back to deal with the figure-eight.  After a bit of research, I used the flush set in the rivet gun and the back rivet plate to flatten the partial dimple.  I then drilled it out, deburred the new hole, and then redimpled the original hole.  The results look satisfactory; I should be able to fill the accidental hole with some epoxy and then rivet the rest of the skin as normal.  Since the mistake is on the bottom of the skin, nobody should ever see it, especially once paint goes on.

Completed spars, temporarily stored on motorcycle “sawhorses”:

ARGH:

Late start in the shop tonight- Josie and I went out to dinner and didn’t get home until 7:30 or so.  Once we got home, I turned on the A/C in the garage, let things cool off for a bit, and then got right to work on the rear spar.  Nothing too fancy here-the two reinforcement pieces are clamped into the spar channels, and you rivet away.  The only caveats are to make sure you skip the holes for the ribs and elevator hinges.  As recommended in the instructions, I put some blue painter’s tape over those holes to keep myself honest.

Once the reinforcements and channels were attached, the next step was to rivet on the outer elevator hinge brackets.  Finally, it was time to bolt on the center hinge bearing, which was where the only oddness of the night came.  I dutifully dug out the proper bolts, nuts, and washers. (noting to myself along the way that it was time to buy another storage bin for these things)  I went to push the first bolt through the hinge bracket-and it wouldn’t fit in the hole.  Huh?

Well, there were basically two possibilities here: either the instructions called for the wrong hole size, or I misread them and drilled the wrong hole size.  I checked back and found that the holes should have been drilled to #12.  I then compared the bolts to my trusty drill bit gauge…yep, #12 is the perfect hole size.  I don’t know what I drilled those holes with, but it wasn’t a #12 bit.  Going through my bit collection, I found that I did indeed have a #12 bit…weird.

The only remaining issue was that these holes had been match-drilled with the bracket clecoed in place.  Well, with the large holes I had drilled now, there was no way to really clamp the thing in place and match-drill again.  So I just separately drilled the holes to #12, hoping that everything would line up…and it did.  On went the bolts, nuts, and washers, and the rear spar was officially done!

I really wanted to move on to the front spar, but it was getting late as usual, and I try to knock off the air tool usage after 10 or so, especially the rivet gun.  No worries though, the front spar is a lot simpler, far fewer rivets to take care of there.

The finished product from tonight:

Yup, with the sole exception of dimpling the skins and finishing the edges, there’s nothing left but riveting.

I was able to get an early start today; I had some medical stuff to take care of in the afternoon, and wasn’t sure how long it would take, so I took half a day off work.  Once I got home, it was straight into the garage and down to business.  First order was to dimple all the skeleton parts, which didn’t take long.  Then it was out to the driveway for some quality time spent cleaning and scuffing all those parts.  Of course, about this time I could hear a good old Georgia summer thunderstorm moving in, so I ended up moving the parts into the garage so they could dry.  

Luckily, the storm barely skirted us.  Clearing skies and a look at the radar confirmed that it looked like I’d have a good window for priming, and it indeed worked out well.  A couple hours later, I had a bunch of nice primed parts.  In the meantime, between primer coats and with some help from Josie, the vinyl came off the skins and all those rivet holes were deburred. (she also relieved me while I was dimpling earlier; with just a hand squeezer, the old forearms get a bit weary after a while)

I guess tomorrow the real fun starts!

Prepped parts drying in the driveway.  Gotta love my “custom” hitch-haul drying rack…

“Please rivet me!  Please!!!”

Well, overall this was a surprisingly unproductive weekend, at least as far as the plane was concerned.  I pretty much procrastinated myself out of my available work time on Saturday.  Today Josie was doing a NASCAR driving thing at Atlanta Motor Speedway, so I tagged along to watch the fun and get pictures.  This was after we got up at 7 AM to watch the MotoGP race, and then met her family for breakfast.  By the time we got back, a nap was definitely in order, but then we got out in the garage and got to work.

Nothing stunning really; I finished all the drilling on the starboard h-stab while Josie got to work deburring all the numerous holes in the port h-stab skeleton.  By the time the night was over, everything was drilled and deburred, ready for cleaning and priming.  Side note: there are, um,  a lot of holes to be deburred in that skeleton.  I’m writing this mostly so that I can look back and laugh at myself when I’m working on the wings, at which point I’ll presumably learn a new definition for “a lot of holes.”

Got a late start tonight after going out for dinner with Josie.  I did, however, get my angle drill in, so I was able to continue working right where I left off.  First up were the tasks requiring the angle drill: drilling the rivet holes between HS-404, HS-702, HS 810/814, and HS-405.  These were a piece of cake with the new angle drill.  From there, I finished drilling/match-drilling all the skin-skeleton holes.  Then everything came apart, I drilled the last eight holes in the outboard ends of the spar reinforcements, and that was that!

By this time, it was going on 10:00, and I’d been at it for 90 minutes.  I figured that completing the other stab would keep me out there until 11:30, at which point the neighbors might not appreciate the constant sound of spinning air drills and a running compressor.  Plus I have to get up early in the morning for the EAA 690 breakfast.

I did notice an issue as I was taking the port stab apart, and a look at the starboard stab showed the same issue.  The forward most holes between HS-405 and the skins are all a little tight on minimum edge distance.  I don’t see how I could have done this any differently, though… those holes are drilled using prepunched holes in the skin as drill guides, and the rib is further positioned quite positively off the rear spar channel.  There doesn’t seem to be any way that rib could have been shifed forward to allow for proper edge distance.  A touch of research seems to indicate that this is a common problem, and that the universal advice from Van’s amounts to “build on!”  But I’m sort of a nervous Nellie, so I think I’ll ask the folks over at VAF just to be sure.  Worst case, I think I could shore things up by adding an additional rivet without a lot of fanfare.

Bad edge distance!  BAD!!!

Short work night.  Not because I’m busy, but because it didn’t take nearly as long as I thought to get to the point where I had to stop and wait for a new tool to arrive.

Last night, I assembled all the parts of the port h-stab skeleton and skin, and did all the match-drilling up to the point the instructions called for an angle drill, which I didn’t have.  The drill was ordered from Spruce today, but work didn’t have to stop…I still had to repeat all these steps on the starboard stab.  So that’s what I worked on tonight.  It actually went really fast, and before long I was stuck yet again.

Luckily, I got the ship notification from Spruce just a bit ago, so I should have the drill tomorrow and be able to jump right back into things after work.

In the meantime…well, the instructions certainly don’t call for temporarily assembling the entire h-stab right now, but how I could I resist the opportunity to spend ten minutes adding a few clecos and ending up with something I could stare at while cackling madly?  I figure there’s some value in detours like this that help remind you that yes, you are going to end up with airplane-type stuff eventually.  Motivation, I tell you…