Wednesday, December 9, 2015

Section: 17
Hours: 7.5

I hit page 17-06 in the manual. It is one of those pages that looks like there's not much to do. It specifies you cleco the parts together and then rivet. It took almost 2 hours to cleco and then I continuously riveted the rest of the day and didn't quite finish.

I almost emptied my bucket of clecos putting the leading edge assembly together. I ordered a pneumatic cleco squeezer last week, I was really wishing it was here today. My right hand and elbow is starting to get pretty sore so I did most of the cleco work with my left hand today.


I stupidly spent some time trying to cleco the attachment doubler to the outside of the wing skin. The holes just wouldn't line up- that's when I knew I was doing something wrong. Gotta pay more attention to the drawings- the doubler is inserted between the skin and the rib.

The manual specifies that you first rivet the aft most 2 rivets top and bottom to all the ribs. Then you work your way 1 row at a time towards the leading edge. I spent all afternoon working my way to the leading edge. After squeezing my hands into the ailerons and flaps, it was nice to work with an easily accessible, open structure today. However, as the afternoon wore on, I found myself reaching further and further to get to the next rivet. Also, as you progress further towards the nose, the curvature of the airfoil becomes greater so it becomes harder to get the rivet gun aligned perpendicular to the rivets. I decided to quit with the 2 most difficult rows of rivets left to go. I'll hit them tomorrow when I'm fresh.




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