![\"IMGP3980\"](\"https:\/\/rv10.mirimar.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/IMGP3980.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nThursday evening the\u00a0VS spar\u00a0was assembled.\u00a0 The spar,\u00a0spar caps, doublers, and rudder hinges were all squeezed. No worries here and the results were\u00a0good.<\/p>\n
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No drill outs or smileys on the final spar assemblies.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Rich and I made extensive use of a Van’s mini-wing project to practice the rivet\/bucking techniques needed for most of the work on skins.\u00a0 Good thing too, because our initial efforts were miserable.\u00a0 The greatest damage was done when the tungsten bucking bar slid off the rivet, pounding the h*** out of the skin from the inside.\u00a0 Many adjustments to the air pressure at the rivet gun were also needed to get things into a calmer, but effective range.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n I took a day off work to take advantage of Rich’s final days on\u00a0his visit from Texas. This picture shows the parts staged on Friday morning for both vertical stabilizer and the rudder. The plan was squeeze, back rivet, then buck as many parts in that order.\u00a0 First priority was completing the VS over the weekend, nice to have the rudder done if possible.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Back riveting the rudder skins.\u00a0\u00a0This was\u00a0obviously not part of the VS build, but I wanted to save bucking activities until last.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Again no problem.\u00a0 The back rivet results are all good.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Here is the final assembly of the static wick nut plates.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Staging the VS frame for squeezing.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Notice the flexible conduit running through the forward rib lightning holes.\u00a0 My custom\u00a0rib doubler and the lightning hole wire ties\u00a0for holding the conduit worked like a charm.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Okay, here is where\u00a0a serious case of\u00a0nerves set in!\u00a0 Our first ‘production’ bucking experience was on the middle nose ribs.\u00a0 I had to reach a full arm length into the skin cavity to hold\u00a0the 1.7lb tungsten bucking bar up against an AN426AD3-3.5 rivet.\u00a0 Other builders have seriously disfigured the skins in this section; this\u00a0being one of the most difficult assignments on the whole plane build right at the beginning.\u00a0 At this point I was very anxious and the pucker-factor quite large.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n This picture is fuzzy, but does show the finished\u00a0rivets on the middle nose ribs.\u00a0 I had to go through some contortions, but eventually was able to see the rivet\/bar with a flashlight during the bucking operation. Seeing the rivet shank\u00a0and not being blind made all the difference.\u00a0 Added to this, Rich did excellent work driving the rivets\u00a0with a\u00a0steady hand\u00a0and consistent manner.\u00a0\u00a0I was quite pleased\u00a0with the resulting shop heads.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Finishing up the lower spar and spar cap squeezes.\u00a0 The overall assembly process went slower than expected, but we were very deliberable on purpose.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Final result on the lower part of spar. We used a 1.5″ diameter mushroom rivet set with a rubber apron for the skins.\u00a0 The rubber apron kept the rivet set from bouncing sideways and cushioned the impact to some degree.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Final result on the upper part of spar.\u00a0 We made sure to use rivet tape on every single flush rivet. This small, but important step keeps the head from crushing off all corrosion protection on the rivet set or die, but also prevents the skins from getting scratched.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n I could not have\u00a0achieved this\u00a0excellent outcome\u00a0without Rich’s\u00a0help.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Another power weekend with Rich and the vertical stabilizer is assembled! After months of metal preparation, logistics and practice on sacrificial mini-projects, the big day for actually setting rivets in plane parts was upon me.\u00a0 In the lead up week, my technical counselor (Terry Gardner) came by to evaluate progress and provide final tips.\u00a0 With …<\/span> Continue Reading →<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,9,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rv-10-build-project","category-section-6-vertical-stabilizer","category-section-7-rudder"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rv10.mirimar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rv10.mirimar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rv10.mirimar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rv10.mirimar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rv10.mirimar.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=669"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/rv10.mirimar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":686,"href":"https:\/\/rv10.mirimar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669\/revisions\/686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rv10.mirimar.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rv10.mirimar.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rv10.mirimar.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>Saturday evening saw happy campers and great results!\u00a0In the end we only had to drill out 3\u00a0rivets. Interestingly enough all three of these were squeezed.\u00a0No smileys or\u00a0dents in the smooth skin surface are also testimony to\u00a0careful planning and solid execution. Who would have thunk it given my previous concerns about bucking.<\/p>\n