I ended up scoring a decent little pneumatic rivet puller / gun from Harbor Freight for $25 after the coupon during their sale. This will save me some labor on ALL those blind rivets along the bottom of the ailerons. Lets put it to use! I don’t like very much … Continue reading
Time to start riveting up the ailerons! I gathered up the parts for the left aileron and studied over the drawings and instructions, and began final assembly and riveting on this guy. We start out by riveting the A-704 nose ribs to the A-409 counterbalance pipe, and then slipping this … Continue reading
Even a little progress is some progress.. right? I didn’t get a whole lot done tonight, but I did get over a small hump that I have been mulling over: The messed up leading edge rivet. A few posts back I ended up damaging the left leading edge skin due … Continue reading
I didn’t get much accomplished tonight. What has gotten me stuck is just how to deburr the inside of the A-409 counterbalance pipe for the aileron leading edge. But I did get a little progress made, I’ll detail that below. I started out by pulling all the parts out of … Continue reading
I’m back in town after being gone for almost a week, and finally getting to do a little work done on he airplane. In the last session, I alodine’d some parts, so they’d be ready to prime when I got back. I am still using the old method of scuffing … Continue reading
A LOT accomplished tonight. I managed to get all the aileron parts dimpled, the counterbalance pipe countersunk, and even alodined a few of the small parts. I started off by setting up my DRDT-2 dimpler so I could make quick work of the skins. This is pretty much what this … Continue reading
Time to get down to the dirty work: Deburring, and edge finishing. This will be a short post, but it was jam packed with work. First I deburred all the holes in both aileron parts (skins, ribs, spar, etc). Then, I deburred all the lightening holes in the spar, of … Continue reading
Tonight was pretty much a duplicate of last night. I started out by assembling the leading edge and the trailing edge skins to the skeleton and match drilling everything. Making sure to drill out the holes along the bottom to a #30 hole where the skins overlap the spars. Once … Continue reading
We’re getting close to having a completed aileron! I was able to fully complete the assembly and drilling of the left aileron tonight, and its parts are now ready for deburring, edge finishing, and priming. I will hold off on that until I have the right aileron done and do … Continue reading
Bending skins is one of those tasks that make me nervous! Van’s ships the aileron skins with the trailing edge bent only just enough to form the trailing edge. The reason is so that you can easily attach the stiffeners via backriveting. The task itself is not difficult, but it … Continue reading