After being away for few weeks and giving some care to the PA28, I'm now back into the shop with the legitimate intent to riveting off the top skins on the wing boxe. At that moment, I didn’t thought I’d had a bad day…
We did a practice run on riveting my son and I just to be sure we are ok. Then we started riveting but after a short while, I realized that something was really wrong. Oh crap. We used the wrong gauge so most of the rivets are overdone. There is no way around this. They ought to be removed. Removing about 80 rivets or so wasn’t that bad but I’m afraid that the holes in the ribs are now oversized due to over setting the rivets. This is as bad as if I had screwed up with drilling off the rivet head with an offset hole. Both the skin and the ribs are affected however, not everywhere. Worse, a slight deformation on the skin is noticeable around the rivet head so I may need to replace the whole skin. So I’ve contacted Van’s support and they said they could ship the skin through USPS at 65$. Fiuw… But before ordering, I need to check further if I do have to replace the skin.
After evaluating the situation, I think that the best way to correct this is to use “oops” rivets (NAS1097AD) where there was an over set rivets. Besides, after dimpling back the skin with the DRDT-2, it looks like the deformed holes aren’t that bad anymore thus maybe saving the skin.
All set for showing off some progress after a long absence...
That awful deformation was the red flag to stop riveting
Some holes are oversised and will get a "oops" rivet
