Brief Description: Riveting Rear Spar to VS Assembly
The holes common to the VS-706 tip rib and VS-702 and VS704 root and nose ribs were riveted with my squeezer. I had a couple of rivets set a little crooked and had a small gap under one side of the manufactured head. Of course, one of the rivets is being a PITA getting the shank out of the hole at the tip. I got the head off, but I'm going to defer that one hole until later.
The final step is to rivet the rear spar assembly in place. I started at the tip and worked my way down towards the root. The tip rib is riveted to the rear spar with AD4 rivets. I had a little problem with alignment and the rivet head wasn't flush to the rear spar, but with a little help from a drift pin I got everything lined up.
Then I started on the rivets common to the rear spar flange and skin. I got consistant perfect rivets with my squeezer until I got to the doubler on the rear spar. It got a little tight there with the yolk and I scraped the rivet head holding the doubler to the rear spar a bit. Nothing that would require replacing, but the tail of the rivet common to the rear spar flange and the skin wasn't so lucky. The rivet set only contacted part of the cross section of the tail and I got a cowlick (see the picture). I think I'll have to switch to the gun and bucking bar to do these rivets. Vans should design an offset to this fastener pattern to eliminate this difficulty, but I doubt they'd change now. Configuration control is a pain. Ask me how I know.
So close to finishing but "The Curse" strikes again.
Rear spar attached with clekos and ready to rivet.
A drift pin helped me get the rivet head to lay flat against the rear spar web.
The upper two rivets on the right got a bad squeeze. They need to come out.
