H. Stab Part II
Last week, I finished riveting together the forward spar and began riveting the ribs and spars to the skins. The spars were pretty straight forward to rivet with the squeezer. Make sure to mark off the holes you aren’t supposed to rivet in the forward spar, like the 4 that attach the ribs. Cause if you think you’ll just remember not to do them, you’ll end up drilling out 4 rivets…
On the first night of riveting the ribs to the skin, two Australian friends, Matt and Steph came over to check out the progress and buck a couple rivets. As I’m writing this, they are probably on a plane back to Australia. It was awesome having them in town for the time I’ve been here. Steph earned her master’s in flight test engineering at NTPS and Matt went line dancing with us almost every week.
When riveting the forward middle rib on to the skin, it’s helpful to have another set of hands (thanks matt and steph). Once that rib is riveted on one side, the rest went pretty smoothly. When riveting the forward spar and ribs, it really helps to put some squishy tape around the bucking bar so you don’t scratch up the primer. Only put the tape on the areas that are not touching the rivet. One the pictures, you can see when I did a line of rivets without the tape and then one with the tape. There are little scratch marks on the side of the rib where the bucking bar kept whacking it. After I put the tape on, I was pretty happy how the rest turned out. Next week will be starting on the right side and then riveting on the rear spar!
