Monthly Archives: November 2016

Tonight was just finishing up the metal prep work in advance of priming. I ended up getting all of the substructure dimpled and ready for cleaning and priming. I mostly used my DRDT2 to dimple the parts, since its so convenient and easy to use. But, it just won’t get in to some of the hard to reach holes around the corners of the parts and the noses of the ribs. So, I had to fire up the squeezer for those few remaining tight holes.

There were a few holes that were too close to even fit my squeezer, especially on the HS-706 rib. Luckily I had just the tool for that:

This pop-rivet dimple set worked very very well, and its worth every penny! I had never used one before, but figured it couldn’t be too bad, so I gave it a go without trying a test piece first. It took a few tries of starting out gently squeezing, and moving to progressively firmer squeezes with the pop-rivet tool, but after the first one I realized that the nail “mandrel” could take a good bit of pressure. I kept dropping in a AN4263-4 rivet to check the dimple to make sure I had it flush enough. After a few tries I learned how to have good results like this one on the first squeeze:

One foot note: While attempting to dimple the bottom flange on the rear spar, I realized I didn’t match drill the entire bottom flange, because my dimple die would not fit in the hole. Whoops 🙂 But it was an easy fix. I just re-clecoed the spar to its married skin, and matched drilled the holes. Then re-deburred the holes in the skin and spar, and proceeded to dimple as normal.

Not many photos from tonight since there isn’t a lot to capture during dimpling, but heres what I took: https://goo.gl/photos/XBrdgZvJTqFzhiGP7

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Lots of part prep done tonight. I only have a couple hours I could spare, so I worked to wrap up all the prep work on the ribs, spars and skins.

Lots of deburring, edge breaking and smoothing, and filing on all of the left horizontal stabilizer. I also removed a few strips of blue plastic around the rivet holes on the skin, trying to leave as much as possible on the skin to help keep it protected. I used the soldering iron method to make the strips smooth and a ruler to help guide it. I also ground the tip of the iron down on my bench grinder so it’s not sharp. Its almost rounded off, and does a great job of melting the plastic and not scratching the skin.

I had asked the forum about those last 4 remaining holes on the HS-00001 doubler, and it seems the consensus is that all the pre-punched holes on the doubler needs to be back-drilled into the spar and spar bar. So I drilled those out tonight and deburred them. Heres that thread for reference: http://www.vansairforce.com/communit…d.php?t=143576

I also spent a little time practicing removing rivets from my practice kit. These kits are pretty handy! I have done a couple and I always find myself using them as “experiment pieces” months after I had completed them. I didn’t take any photos of this since its not really relevant to the build. It was just me trying to work on drilling out rivets.

Heres a few photos from tonights work. There’s not many, since there really isn’t much to show: https://goo.gl/photos/ZDRwZgKYnNYLB6nUA

I am going to pick up a few tools to make things go a little faster:
1. Electric screwdriver for deburring
2. 1/4 adapter for deburring bit: http://www.cleavelandtool.com/HEX-AD…ductinfo/1095/
3. Movers blankets

My goal is to do the same to the right horizontal stab, and then move on to dimpling. If the weather holds up, and I get all these parts ready, I plan on spraying them with AKZO this weekend.

Today I worked on the right horizontal stabilizer. Technically I completed the “Drilling the horizontal stabilizer” section of the plans, save for the riveting.

Todays session was pretty much identical to the last one, except I was completing the right side horizontal stabilizer as opposed to the left from the previous session.

In summary, I clecoed the ribs, then match drilled them to form the skeleton. Then I worked on fitting the HS-00005 and HS-00006 ribs into the skeleton and marking, and back drilling them. The tedious part was the measuring and aligning, and then clamping everything to drill.

Once they were good to go, I started back and match drilling the skins to the ribs and spars. That wrapped up the session for the night. To finish out this subsection, I will disassemble both sides so that I can prep them for priming and riveting.

Thats going to include:
1. Deburring all the holes
2. Scotchbrite all the edges
3. Rounding any corners
4. Scuffing the surfaces
5. Cleaning everything with acetone.
6. Spraying Akzo
7. Dimpling the skins and ribs
8 Riveting everything together.

Heres the photos from tonights work: https://goo.gl/photos/5XakAzTRj4FCnpic7