Brief Description: Primed and Riveted Right Leading Edge
Big day today (and not all positive). I primed and riveted the right leading edge. One short sentence that took a few hours to complete. I carefully selected the LEFT joint plate and asked my wife if she would like to learn to shoot rivets while we were working on the bottom of the leading edge. She did a great job. I test fit the leading edge and tank and could not get the screws in the joint plate to line up. Unfortunately, I had to drill out and reshoot all of the rivets in the inboard rib because I put the LEFT plate on the RIGHT leading edge! Somewhere between the original shooting session and take two, I misplaced my tungsten bucking bar. We looked everywhere and still could not find it. I checked the fit again after installing the correct plate and the tank is not exactly the same height as the leading edge. I think I will try to edge roll the tank skin and it should be fine. I moved on to the SafeAir1 pitot tube mast in the left wing bottom skin. I had taped the template to the wing the night before. I used a unibit and a dremel tool to cut the hole in the wing. One of the cutting bits broke and gouged a hole in my finger. I'm not sure where all of the pieces landed, but hopefully it missed my car. I managed to keep the blood off of the aluminum and confined to the Dremel. I test fit the mast to the hole and discovered that I had placed the template line even with the bottom skin and leading edge joint even though it clearly states the line is an estimate of the edge of the spar. End result-pitot mast hole is 3/4" too far forward. I ordered a new W-705-L bottom skin from Van's for $88.75 which is probably a heck of a lot less than what the shipping is going to cost me!
