Brief Description: Complete Front Spar Assy and Rivet Skin
The bad rivets from last session needed to be removed. My rivet removal tool makes it a lot easier to do without screwing up the holes. Once the head was off it was still tough to get the shank out of the hole. I ended up putting a dent in two holes from the force of punching them out. That was fixed by getting two bucking bars and sandwiching the web between them then hammering the dent flat. Good enough to proceed.
About this time Jay came over to help with the final riveting. Once the front spar assembly was finished we fastened in into the skin with cleckos. The plans call for a specific order to rivet the skin in place. First start at the mid rib and front spar. Work your way up to the tip, then go back to your starting point and work your way to the root. Then at the original starting point again, work aft towards where the rear spar will be. Repeat for the opposite side.
For once, things went fairly smoothly. Jay manned the bucking bar and I held the gun. We got into a pretty good rythym and within an hour had finished all the rivets common to the front spar and mid rib. The VS-706 tip rib was riveted using the squeezer, except the forward most rivets. It was too tight for any of my bucking bars or the squeezer yoke. Looks like I need to call Cleaveland Tools again and get a thin nose yoke to get those last two in place.
It was getting late so I'll finish up tomorrow. I only have to rivet the nose and root ribs to the skin and then the rear spar assembly into place to complete Section 6.
I had to clamp the parts together to insure the stack up was flat when riveting.
Front spar assembly ready to rivet to the skin.
Only the root rivets remain. The blue taped holes remain unriveted for the fairing later on.
