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Tibbo's RV-14 Hobby
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Date: 3-6-2016
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Number of Hours: 4.00
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Manual Reference: 06
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Brief Description: Riveted VS; damaged rudder skin
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First, some terms.
So a rivet, most of the time, looks like a tiny golf tee. The spread out portion on top is called the manufactured head, and the other end, once driven or pounded, will flatten to form the "shop head". Usually, you rivet by pounding the manufactured head while holding a "bucking bar" (any solid heavy chunk of metal) against the opposite end. The force of hitting the manufactured head causes the bucking bar to "buck" and hammer back and forth, flattening the end into a shop head. The pounding is done by a rivet gun, which is a more controllable version of a pnumatic chisel.
So that's normal riveting. Back riveting is when you pound directly on the tail forming the shop head while a plate does the bucking against the manufactured head. In this case, for the rudder skin, the manufactured head sits flush in the skin dimples, so I had to back-rivet all those rivets into the skin to attach the rudder stiffeners. Kayla helped out in placing rivets into the rudder skin holes. The first picture below is the first of the two rudder skins.
I failed to keep checking that the back-rivet was moving along as I went along with the rivets. I ended up back-riveting without the plate, and chisel effect of the rivet gun this warped the rudder skin. I originally had planned on finishing the rudder today, but now I have to order a new skin. I also overtensioned and damaged the handheld rivet squeezer, which for many rivets is the only way to reach them. So with the rudder, I'm definitely at a stopping point until I get a new skin and squeezer.
I cleaned up the rudder assembly, and moved on to the vertical stabilizer. After re-checking the directions, I riveted the skin onto the vertical stablizer skeleton. There is some minor cosmetic warping around several rivet holes, which is just the result of the gun not being absolutely perfectly perpendicular/still during riveting. I think I would have more control if I dedicated myself to the gun and had a partner hold the bucking bar, but today I worked alone.
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Ready to rivet rudder stiffeners
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Vertical Stabilizer, left side
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Vertical Stabilizer, right side
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