Section: 22
Hours: 4

The weather turned rainy and cold so I decided to do some riveting in the warmth of the garage today. I started with the small aileron parts. I was able to reach all the rivets with the squeezer today. It's always satisfying to see the pieces go together after all the hours of filing, polishing, drilling, counter sinking, dimpling and priming. All these parts come in a left and right configuration so you have to pay attention while assembling.

 I didn't put in enough clecos before starting the riveting on one of these and it warped after a couple rivets.  The doubler/hinge point material is much thicker than the rib but the shop head is on the rib side due to the countersinking so the rib wants to warp when you squeeze the rivet. I drilled out the last rivet, flattened the rib in the dimpler with flush dies and then added more clecos before finishing the rivets. It might have been better to start with the AD3 nut plate rivets at the top and then do the heavier AD4 rivets.

After cross referencing with the packing list I found the hardware for attaching the ribs to the stainless steel tubing counter weights. It is a little tricky tightening down this hardware- I found a right angle philips head in my tool kit which saved the day. I left the screws a little loose. I plan to torque them down after attaching the ribs to the spar to make sure everything aligns properly.

I leave the blue protective covering on the skins until either I prime or rivet. I leave it on for dimpling which eliminates the scratching problem from moving the skins around the dimpling die. Stripping the blue plastic protective coating from the rivet lines always takes longer than I think it should. I'm going to have to find a hotter soldering iron so I can move faster. All the aileron skins are ready to flush rivet the ribs.  I loaded up the first skin with rivets and taped them down with rivet tape. I'm all ready to pound out a serious number of rivets next building session. These skins take AD3-3's which are the smallest rivets I've used so far in the construction. The empennage skins used AD3-3.5's.