Van's RV-9A in Aurora

The Big Picture

The Big Picture
Flying! 8/28/2011

Monday, January 12, 2009

2.5 hrs, 29 rivets
Started by leveling the left spar, and then clecoing the leading edge on for the last time!

The daughter was home, so cooped her to shoot rivets. I bucked, she ran the rivet gun. We had to drill out the first one because I wasn't holding the bucking bar right and it immediately bent over. Actually I was trying to use a piece of compression foam with a hole in it to press the spar flange down while the bucking bar is against the rivet. It just didn't work. After 15 minutes drilling that out, shot it again, this time perfectly.

Had to drill out one more that we didn't even buck. It wasn't going in, so we gave it a couple of light taps to seat it. That really screwed it up. Took 20 minutes to drill out this one, since it was only a millimeter in the hole. Couldn't pull it out, but had to drill it into oblivion. Didn't mess up the spar or flange too bad, and the replacement went in fine.

Got 5 of the ribs done, two more plus one corner rivet to go. That last rivet has to wait until it's off the stand and the mounting angle is removed.