Brief Description: Drilling out the Attachment Rivets
I took the bull by the horns today and drilled out the four remaining rivets in the right hand attachment block so as to replace it with a new one after having pecked it while riveting.
For this process, I used my very small dremel model drill press which worked a treat. Initially I took off the head with the RRT-4 tool that I purchased from Cleavland for removing Universal rivet heads. I assumed that this would give adequate centreing of the drill for the next step. The first one that I did, was not quite centred, so for the remaiing three, I centre punched the rivet head first to ensure that everything stayed on centre. I then drilled them with a 1/16th inch drill down to the level of the shop head then expanded it out to a #35 with a couple of intermediate drills. I then was able to push them slowly out using a 3.2mm punch.
The great news is that the process went well and did not damage the spar or the doubler. There is no obvious widening of the hole at all. Whew...
The approach worked well and I can now add removal of -10 rivets to my skill set... I dont think I should be proud of that fact.
