Sat May 26 2007

Completed left top main skins

I finished up riveting the bottom leading edge skin to the left spar. That pneumatic squeezer sure is nice. :-)

The top surface of the left wing is completely done except for about 20 rivets that I couldn't reach by myself.

While riveting I noticed something...here's one of the holes at the inboard end of the wing that's supposed to remain unriveted. It's used later for attaching the wing gap fairning. I was careful not to dimple the skin...

...but DOH! I dimpled the wing walk doubler behind it.

Well it looks a K1000 nutplate will fit over the dimple. That means that when I drill out this hole for the screw, that the dimple should be completely drilled away. Even if there's a slight edge left, it won't hurt anything.

Update: The preview plans that show K1000 nutplates for attaching the wing gap fairings are WRONG! These should be K1100 nutplates to accept flush screws.

My friend Jason Cooper was in town from Kansas City, KS. We've been close friends since high school. Jason was nice enough to help me rivet the last 20 or so rivets in the left wing. It's too bad Jason doesn't live closer...I love working on projects with him.

Later in the evening, my friend, Rob Skeens, came up as well. I put Jason and Rob to work riveting on the rear spar to the right wing. They got the hang of using the pneumatic squeezer really quickly and got the rear spar riveted on.

Jason did the rivets which were accessible from the top side of the wing and Rob did the ones which requred squeezer access from the bottom side of the wing.