January 9, 2006
More skin work. I came home from work and started banging rivets. Ellen came home right after me, and I put her right to work.
Here she is measuring my rivet heads.
Man, it was soooo nice building with Ellen again. She got her test results on Friday and she passed!! Whoo Hooo! Now she has a whole lot more free time to work on the plane with me. Scroll down a little bit and you'll see an essential ingredient to getting her out in the garage on those chilly dessert nights. Here's where we quit for the night. The whole other side is done. It started getting late so I couldn't finish up on this side. Tommorow...maybe at lunch. We'll see.
I forgot to mention this when I closed up the rudder leading edge, but I couldn't get that rivet on the top pulled. My puller's head was just too big so I went to Harbor Freight and got...
...this guy. I fully expected to have to grind it down to make it work. I didn't want to grind down my nice one. This one cost me $6.00, or something. I figured that I probably only need it for a few rivets, and if I ruin it by grinding so be it. Turns out it was small enough as is to get that last pesky rivet.
Here's the secret to building with your wife...HEAT. I had this installed just before I went on vacation. Makes all the difference in the world. It heats the whole garage to 70 degrees in about 20 minutes.
Here's the bucking bar I use the most. It comes in the Avery kit, but this side isn't polished. I cleaned it up with my bench belt sander and then polished it with some scotch brite. A bit of duct tape around the front, and this makes an ideal bucking bar for those spar rivets. If you cleco every other hole, it fits perfectly between the two clecos. The tape keeps you from damaging the spar. I just rest it on my finger tips, kinda use my palm to control the back end and whack it. Very easy.