Brief Description: Dimpled the Skins - Major Problem
I had forgotten I bought a laser cross tool from Cleaveland that magnetically attaches to my DRDT dimpler that shows you where your dimple die is. It's a great help to get the die into the hole without having to hunt for it and scratching up your exterior skin. I'm not sure if Cleaveland sells this tool anymore, but it's proved its worth to me.
As I was dimpling the left skin, I noticed something on one of the holes after I dimpled it. Looking at the hole through my jeweler's loupe I saw there was a definate crack in the hole and the dimpling had opened it up significantly. I'm not sure if this crack was there when I got the replacement skin from Van's or if I did something to damage it.
My first thought was to clean up the hole with a #30 reamer and use an oops rivet (NAS1097). Unfortunately, the crack was too long to clean up. I don't think simply drilling it out would be a practical solution since I'd probably need to go up to a #5 or #6 rivet. There simply isn't enough room.
I'll call Van's on Monday and get their opinion, but I'm pretty sure I'll need to buy a new skin. This kind of thing is right in my wheelhouse because I used to do crack growth analysis for service bulletins. I know first hand how fast cracks can grow and how structure can catastrophically fail when they grow too large.
Laser sight to help get the die into the hole
The center hole has a crack. Here's it's been opened up to a #30. Crack at 9 o'clock.
