Follow my Journey of building a Vans RV-8 Aircraft
Time: 2 Hours
When I got home from work last night I decided I had enough time to jump in on priming the ribs of the HS. I’m using Dupli-Color self-etching primer. It has a lot of good reviews and I really liked how it looked on another builders parts so I followed suit. I will prime all the parts over the next few day and let them cure for a few days and get to riveting.
Time: 1 Hour
This Easter weekend I didn’t get a whole lot done in the hangar. My goal was to prep all my work for the future priming. All the HS substructure got cleaned and is now ready.
Time: 4 Hours
Got a little work done in the Hangar today. Worked on deburring all the holes on both the left and right side HS skins. Then I treated the areas that will be dimpled with the Scotch-Brite pad. Next up was to use the DRDT-2 machine to dimple every hole in the shins, top and bottom. Tomorrow I will do some final Scotch-Brite work on all the pieces and maybe get some priming done.
Time: 3 Hours
Today I was able to get all the substructure of the HS dimpled. That’s the process of creating a dent around the hole so that a flat rivet will sit flush. The skins will have a dimple as well. The dimple creates a pimple of sorts on the underside of the metal. That pimple needs a place to sit in so that the two pieces sit flush with each other. So the substructure, like the flanges on the ribs, need a dimple to accept the pimple of the skin that will be mated to it. To do this process you use a set of dies, one female and one male, that shape the metal into the dimple.
For all the ribs and spars I used my pneumatic squeezer with the correct set of dies. This tool makes quick work of this job.
For really tights spots, like the nose of some ribs, I used a set of dies that uses a nail and the pull rivet tool.
Next up was the job of removing the blue protective plastic from the areas of the skins that have the holes so that I can dimple and eventually rivet them.
Next up will be deburring every hole, top, bottom, inside and out, on both skins. Once that is accomplished I will dimple the skins with my DRDT-2 machine. I set up the DRDT-2 and the table I made for it and clamped it to my workbench. It will be all ready for me tomorrow after all the deburring is done.
Time: 5 Hours
Yesterday I got in around 5 hours in the Hangar. First up was to tackle the dreaded HS-405, HS-702 & HS-404 junction drilling. I spoke about this earlier and how many builders end up with edge distance problems. Usually this distance is ok according to Van’s Aircraft tech support. I had to wait until my 12″ #30 and #40 drill bits got in at Grainger. Then I measured and marked the aft flange of HS-404 and drilled away. Those went very well drilling from forward to aft.
br />
I then used the same bits to drill from aft to forward on the two outer holes. These also included the HS-810, HS-814 stiffeners in the drill group. All in all I was happy with this task, thankfully I learned a lot from other builders mistakes.
Then I was off and running repeating everything I had just finished on the right half of the HS. <