Brief Description: Riveting the left wing skeleton
After several days off the project I was anxious to get back into it (had a cold - really I was just lazy!) It was time to rivet the left wing skeleton together. I was alittle nervous to be honest. Setting those AD4s universals can sometimes be a challenge. You get alot more practice with the smaller AD3 flush rivets. A buddy of mine, Rick Blaes, had given me piece of steel (piece of forklift tongue) and showed me how he lays pieces on that steel and kind of reverse backrivets. I had used it with great success in the past on other parts and it allowed me to make beautiful shop heads with no smilies on the mfg head - very controlled with no traditional bucking bar to worry about. Up to now I only used it for small pieces, but I thought this might be a great way to get these ribs riveted to the spar. So I put the spar face down on some blocks of woods on one end and the piece of steel under the rivet to be "bucked." (see pics) I only got one rib done this morning as most of my :45 was spend with setting it up and fretting over if I should use this technique or go with the traditional bucking bar. I am glad I did is as the rivets came out error free and it was fast and easy! Make sure the steel is very flat and parallel to the work otherwise the rivet could clench. Also be careful that you set everything up so that the steel CANNOT touch any part of the spar (corners, etc) only the rivet to be bucked.
Spar blocked up (note big steel block) and the rib cleco'd into place for riveting.
Finished rib with nice shop heads.
RV-4 builder Rick Blaes - my informal tech counselor and idea man behind this technique.
