Time: 7 Hours
I started to work on the assembly of left aileron so I could match drill all the parts. First up was to match drill the inboard and outboard brackets to the spar/spar reinforcement plates.
I also grabbed the leading edge rib and the main rib and match drilled those with the skin off.
Then the spar/rib assembly was slid into the skin and the leading edge skin clecko’d in place along with the galvanized pipe used as a counterweight.
With the skins I place I match drilled the holes in the leading edge to the ribs and there counterweight.
I will be tossing that drill bit away since it was getting full from going thru the pipe. I had to enlarge the holes into the pipe to a #30 for the larger flush blind rivets that go here as well as the row on the skin to spar line of the bottom side if the aileron.
There is one rivet that gets place through the leading edge rib to the counterweight. To drill this you have to remove the leading edge and drill through the aft hole of the rib with a long bit.
After all the holes are drilled I disassembled the aileron and worked on the counterweight. You need to countersink the holes so it will accept the dimple of the skin. I’m not sure how dull this made my bit but I think I will order a new one when I’m all finished. I just used the bit without the cage since this is a round surface.
After I took care of the counterweight i figured I would tackle the dimpling of the skin that rivets to the counterweight. The issue is that the holes are right on the radius of the skin. This caused a problem with the female side if the dimple dies as the die is flat ad would cause some serious deformation of the skins curve. I read a couple other builders blogs where they made a rod to attach the male end if the dies to. Then they would strike that rod/die against the skin while using the countersink in the counterweight as the female side. Instead of fabricating a rod I just drilled a 3/16″ hole in the unused side of one if my bucking bar.
Now the question is how to hold the skin and counterweight so that you can dimple it? I read a post by Brad Oliverand how he accomplished this task. I just copied his technique and it worked out great. I used two 2×4″ and made a jig where I taped two 1/4″ dowels on the top to give the counterweight a place to rest.
I hit the the bucking bar with a rubber mallet and the dimple turned out really nice.
I then turned my attention to deburring all edges, corners and holes. I also used the countersink to hit the holes that will be under the rib flanges and attach the single nutplate that holds the aileron bracket on. All the holes got dimpled as well.
It was a great day in the Hangar!
