Brief Description: Rivet F-821-1 top forward skin-4
I wanted to get some rivets in the longeron just aft of the instrument panel bulkhead. Nancy came to the shop and ran the gun while I was inside the fuse attempting to buck the rivets. I say attempting, because it didn’t work out very well. There is a lip where the roll bar is bolted to the fuse. Between the lip and the bolt heads, I had a hard time getting and keeping the bar on the rivets. We set six and drilled out a couple. Next, we started on the left side of the instrument bulkhead. Nancy did a great job of driving those rivets. All of the instrument bulkhead rivets are now done. Tomorrow we’ll finish the baggage bulkhead. I began squeezing rivets at the forward part of the skin—where it joins the skin baggage strip spacer, firewall and cowl hinge. I had a difficult time with rivets wanting to clench over. The plans call for -5’s, but they seemed a bit long. So, I tried a couple of -4.5’s—they drove straight, but just wasn’t enough shop head. I drilled our several and set them using the gun and bar. That seemed to work the best, so I drove all of the rest of rivets across the firewall flange with the gun. Just have to be extremely careful not to ding one of the eyes on the hinge or the pin will not fit well.
