November 26, 2005
I decided to finish off the VS today.
I primed the VS-707 rib (the one that gave me heartburn) with rattle can Tempo Zinc Oxide primer. I picked this up from the local auto paint store. FYI....this stuff goes on like crap. AKZO is WAY nicer, but this is WAY convenient for just one little part. It was too windy to do any real priming....that's why I did this instead of just priming it with the HS parts.
The one on the left is an AD-62-something rivet...3/16. The other two are LP4-3.
Voila'. Fixed up the mixup. Now I'm back where I was last week.
Another random shot. I'm so glad to have this all fixed up again, I can't even tell you.
Every now and then I would have a dimple that wasn't quite sitting right. The rivet would be crooked. This was mostly on the sharp bends like this. I grabbed the dimple pliers and just redimpled it in place. That straightened it right out.
A couple of shots of me. We really are building this ourselves Mr. FAA.
squeezing some of these is a bit awkward. Here's where having some sort of jig would have been nice. You don't need it to get it straight, but it does make squeezing easier. I had a bit of a problem on the skin to rear spar rivets....the spar doubler rivets interfere with squeezing. For much of this I had to use the hand squeezer and a thin nosed no hole yoke. I figured out this technique where you start squeezing the rivet, but the yoke's a bit off center (quite a bit, in fact). After you squeeze it just a smidge, you've made yourself enough room that the yoke just barely clears the spar doubler rivet. Doesn't clear by much, but it's enough to get the entire rivet contacting some portion of the squeezer die. It sound much tougher than it really is...all the rivets are more or less perfect and no one would ever know I had to squeeze them like that. Also, note the idiot clecos once again in action. The holes you leave out are for the fairings later on (MUCH later on).
Here's Ellen squeezing the last 3 rivets.
That sucker's ready to vertically stabilize (missing the tips, of course, but close enough). Ellen's eye's are closed 'cause it's just so shiny!
One more shot. I'm really pleased how this came out.