Time: 5 Hours
I got in the Hangar around 10am so I wouldn’t bug my neighbors with all the riveting I was planning on doing. My task for today was to rivet the outboard bottom skin on the left wing. The process was the same as I documented yesterday on the right wing. I took a few less breaks today and had the knowledge of yesterday’s session to help speed up today. I was able to move along fairly quickly today as I knew just where to put my arms for the difficult rivets compared to yesterday when I had to sit and think a little on how the heck I would get a particular rivet. Once I finished the skin rivets I turned my attention to the pitot mast. It has 5 rivets and I also needed to use some ProSeal to seal up the gap where it goes through the skin. I mixed up the ProSeal and made a bead along the pitot mast and the flange it is welded to.
I carefully slid the mast into position without getting ProSeal everywhere and checko’ed it in place. Before I did all of this I had placed the mast into position so I could figure what length rivets I would need as the plan call outs would now be wrong as they don’t take into account this mast. Riveting the mast just tool a few minutes and I was done.
I then removed the flap so I could get all the remaining hinge rivets.
Unlike yesterday and the one ding, today I had 3 small dings and I was beating myself up a little for those. They are all in spots where the bucking bar was difficult to get a perfect hold and I wasn’t able to hold it as still as I liked. When I pulled the trigger the bar jumped a little and twisted causing the corner to hit the skin slightly. These all made a “tent” as I call it, the dent is pushing outward rather than inward as a normal dent would be. I’m assured that a good paint/body guy will make these disappear. These things really bug my OCD as I can’t do a “do over” and they happen so fast. It’s like hearing the rivet gun go bam bam bam bam dink and you just know by the sound that you slipped. Ok enough of that I will get over it and these are the bottoms and no one will ever see them!
I removed the blue film and cleaned all the surfaces up and placed the access hole plates into position.
Here is where the will reside for the next year or so until they are ready for the fuselage.
So that’s it the wings are done!! Now I can work on cleaning up the Hangar this summer and restocking my supplies for the fuselage. I’m creating a list for items to shop for at OshKosh and hopefully will get some bargains.
