Brief Description: Getting help with back riveting
Well Steve a local RV-7 builder came over with his rivet set which is the same as the one I have on order. He took a look at my rudder and thought it was actually usable; there were more rivets he thought were still plenty strong even though they were not pretty. Oh well the new parts are already on the way so I will just start out again fresh parts.
Steve gave a try back riveting and he too clenched over a rivet, this got me to thinking that my back rivet board and plate might be part of the problem. When I rout out the hole in the board for the plate it was just a hair too deep, like less than .015 too deep. I did not think this would be a problem since it was so close and you hold the parts down to the plate when riveting. Just to experiment we took the plate out of the board and tried a rivet on just the plate and some supports for the skin, this seemed to make things better. I even tried one but could not do well do to me cast making it difficult to hold the rivet set flat against the plate, it caused me a little pain. We did not do enough rivets to confirm the theory but enough that I will try to fix the depth of the board.
I have some thin aluminum flashing that I will use to shim up the plate to the proper height. After I am two handed again I will try some more work on the plane, until then I will be reading up on electrical system design!
