Today I took the RH stabilator structure and finished updrilling all the holes, deburring, and dimpling where appropriate. Then I riveted the structure together. I found a good way to get at the rivets on the after spar channel, where there isn't much room for the pneumatic rivet gun. At least, it's better than the little ramp spacer I think.
I picked up the cheapest rivet gun from Home Depot ($10), which is a little thinner than my pneumatic gun or my other hand riveter.
Then I took the bench grinder to it and removed a little material from the top to give a bit more clearance.
This thing can now reach those rivets inside the aft spar channel no problem! It makes it a bit easier to make sure I'm pulling the rivets nice and straight too, so they're turning out a little better than the ones I pulled yesterday with my ramp spacer.
However, I'm still having issues with the flush rivet mandrels breaking off outside of the rivets.
This seems to only happen with the flush rivets. I've only had one normal rivet do this so far on the whole project, but almost every flush rivet has come out like this! It doesn't seem to matter if I use my hand riveter or the pneumatic gun either. I'm going to have to figure out a way to grind those mandrels down to make everything flush.
Aside from a handful of mandrels that need grinding on each structure though, both the LH and RH sides are now done!
No comments:
Post a Comment