Brief Description: Dimple skins and rivet rear spar and nose ribs
Now that everything is primed it was time to go back and finish the deferred steps. I pulled all the rear spar parts and started riveting. After a careful review of the plans I noticed I missed countersinking the rear spar doubler. A through setup and testing on a scrap piece of aluminum for the proper countersink depth was performed and I did the best countersinking job ever in the history of countersinking. Boy was I proud. I even treated the newly-exposed bare aluminum surfaces with a bit of alodine.
Yeah, you know where this is going. I didn't need the countersinks. I misread the plans. The countersinks were already in the mating part on the opposite side. Not really a big deal. I'll just have to double flush the rivets, but I feel pretty stupid for making this mistake. The rest of the rear spar went well.
Next up was dimpling the skins. My friend Jay came over to help and we got it done in a couple of hours.
The last bit tonight was dimpling and riveting the nose ribs into the skin. I set up the cradles and dimpled the ribs. These ribs used my etch and alodine process. I did not manually abrade the surface this time, only the acid etch. When I dimpled the ribs the primer flaked off at the dimple. Even though I got a water-break free surface the primer didn't adhear as well without abrading. I'm not too worried about losing the primer. The alodine will protect the metal. It looks like I can't get away from the ScotchBright scrub no matter which process I use. Oh well, good to know.
Jay manned the bucking bar and I the rivet gun and finished the nose ribs in about an hour. Very happy with the results.
Oops!! I countersunk the two middle holes by mistake.
Jay and I dimpling the skins. He's doing the dimpling and I'm holding the skin.
