First Rivets!!!

Friday 7th March 2008 4hrs

Assembled and riveted VS rear spar. Rivetted top rib and mid rib to fwd spar. Clecoed skin to fwd skeleton parts. Taped skin rivets in place on both rudder skins and placed stiffner ready for riveting.

After 187 hours and 25 minutes working on the project, I finally get to drive my first permanent rivet. I guess my approach of prepping everything and then priming everything before finally assembling anything must be unusual. Most other builders seem to start riveting as soon as they can because that's what building a metal plane is all about.

The very first rivets were a very big deal. They were set by back riveting. The shop heads were not totally perfect but acceptable. I switched to squeezing universal head rivets with the pneumatic squeezer. The importance of getting the tool (rivet gun/bucking bar or air riveter) square to the work was obvious once again. I had to shim out the 1/8 cupped die to clear the spar flange. A longeron yoke would have been better. I notice George Orndorff has a longeron yoke fitted to his squeezer throughout his videos.

When it came to the setting AD470 AD4 in the longer 6 and 7 lengths (to attach the rudder hinge brackets to the spar and doubler, I had the same problem with the squeezer again. There was no way it would do it. I bucked them instead and produced a beautiful smiley with my very first rivet. Not a big problem - one minute with the drill and punch and I had a still-perfect empty hole with which to start again.

I notice some oil from the rivet gun getting all over the primed surfaces. I only put two drops in each evening - you wouldn't think it would produce such a noticeable mess