Some Right Flap Work

January 8, 2012

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Oh wow, it’s the first post of the new year! (Too bad it’s already January 10th…yeah, yeah, I’m posting a few days after this build session actually happened.)

I got a little bit of tedious work done on the right flap before being called over to a coworker’s house to help with his brand new TV. Here are most of the right flap parts.

all the flap parts after matchdrilling (last session). Time for deburring and dimpling.

One of the things I noticed is that I forgot to enlarge these holes to #30.

Before.

After.

Next, I deburred all the spar holes, and got to work on edge finishing. This includes all the lightening holes, which are a PAIN IN THE BUTT to deburr. Because I have an AWESOME sister, she got me some good 1″ scotchbrite wheels. Previously, I had bought a bag of 50 “general purpose” wheels from Nebraska Surplus, but they were a little soft for work on the RV.  My sister got me some of the 6A-Medium wheels, which did the job perfectly.

The correct grade on the left 6A-medium. Don't get the general purpose ones on the right. They are too soft.

After edge finishing, I decided to get the spar set up for a little countersinking session. If you remember from the other flap, the bottom skin is dimpled, so the spar has to be countersunk so the hinge (on the other side of the spar) isn’t affected.

Set up, just need to cleco the hinge in place.

You can see here, I've clecoed the hinge in place and countersunk "a few clicks" deeper than flush.

I don’t know that I’ve ever shown this, but back on the empennage, I made a couple scribe lines on my microstop countersink cage to indicate perfectly flush for an AN426AD3- rivet.

Marked for a flush rivet.

Here are my "few clicks deeper." Four clicks work for me. YMMV.

After countersinking all the holes…

Pretty countersinks.

Oh man. I need to deburr the back of this soft hinge.

Burrs! Burrs!

Sorry about the bad picture, but this is after deburring.

With the blur, you'll just have to trust that it's properly deburred.

1.5 Hours. I’m struggling to get outside even for 30 minutes each night. Tonight, I set a reminder on my phone to buzz at me every night. Maybe it will work. (Nope, it didn’t work tonight, but I managed to post this work session. Maybe tomorrow.)

Until next time.

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Primed Some Left Flap Parts

November 6, 2011

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Well, another week later, and I managed to get out in the garage just once. I guess it’s better than nothing.

I decided to get some of the parts finished up and primed. I always like priming parts, because that’s usually what happens just before final assembly.

I started with the spar, spending quite a bit of time deburring, edge finishing, dimpling the upper flange (remember, the lower flange was countersunk to accomodate the skin, but not intrude into the hinge), and finally, some scuffing.

 

You only get a picture of the scuffing. Sorry.

Then, I started in on the prep for the ribs, and I noticed that the aft flange of the interior ribs are only drilled to #40. As part of my normal prep work, I reread the plans to make sure I know which type and size of rivet goes in each hole. Apparantly, this one is supposed to be drilled to #30 for an AN470AD4- rivet.

WRONG SIZE HOLE!

So, to make some extra work for myself, I clecoed the ribs and spar back onto the lower skin (which has the “rear spar” built into it), and…

Clecoed back together.

Drilled the holes to final, #30, size.

I haven't deburred yet, so don't mind the burrs.

Finally, I spent another chunk of time prepping the rest of the ribs, and getting them cleaned up to take outside for priming.

It was a beautiful day for airplane building today.

Too bad I couldn’t put in more time….just 1.5 hours today. Blah.

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Prepped Left Aileron Parts

September 29, 2011

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Well, the guilt of not working on the airplane very much recently finally got to me and I had to do something.

As it turns out, I got the rest of the left aileron completely deburred, dimpled, edge finished, and scuffed, which means next session will be prep for priming and final assembly after that.

Here’s a shot of the aileron main skin, after deburring, scuffing, and dimpling.

Nice dimples, right?

Not sure why I took this shot, but I had to break into my next pack of maroon scotchbrite. I cut them up into ~3 inch squares to work with.

This is good stuff. I wonder how much I've bought so far.

Then, I repeated the process on the spar, and finally the leading edge skin. In addition to the fingerprints, I also used my edge-forming tool to make a slight bend in the edge.

This helps the skin lay (lie?) flat against the other skin. You’ll see.

Sorry for the bad picture, but it's hard to get a good angle where you can actually see the bend.

Here’s the edge forming tool.

It might be time for new wheels. I think these are worn out.

After the edge was formed, I put the leading edge skin up on my bending brace because it is a good place to hold it, and went down the row with the hand squeezer with some dimple dies.

Action shot!

Halfway through, I noticed my blue-tape-on-the-die was wearing out, so I removed it.

Of course, I tried a few dimples again without replacing the tape, and I got circles.

Duh.

So, I replaced the tape, and got nice dimples again.

Circles on the left, no circles on the right.

Here's a new piece of tape. No more circles.

1.5 hours. Next up: cleaning, priming, and final assembly!

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Some Left Aileron Deburring

September 25, 2011

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Well, I’ve definitely learned something about myself this weekend. After I pass the initial excitement of a completed assembly, I have a hard time repeating all of those little boring steps to get the second one done.

I’m pretty sure I experienced this on the second elevator, I’ve definitely experienced this on the left/right wings, and right now, I’m having trouble motivating enough to get finished up on this left aileron.

BUT.

The other half of this airplane isn’t going to finish itself, so let’s get to it.

A few weeks ago, I left off on the left aileron after having matchdrilled everything, so today, I got it all disassembled, and started in on the tedious crap.

Here are most of the parts (except the skin) after disassembly. Let's start prepping.

The nice thing on this second aileron is that I’ve already done everything once.

No sweat here countersinking the counterbalance pipe.

A little deeper than flush, as usual, to make plenty of room for the skin.

Oh yeah, I had forgotten to flute the nose rib between the two x’s, so I marked them with…well…x’s, so I wouldn’t forget to flute, then drill them as I was taking everything apart.

I clearly went a little overboard on the flute there. I "unfluted" a little before matchdrilling.

Then ( I guess I was bad at taking pictures today), I clecoed the skin back onto the counterbalance pipe, balanced the assembly on a 2×4 (which was part of my bending brake I had attached to my workbench), and dimpled using the die from my borrowed c-frame.

They all turned out great, like the ones on the right aileron.

Then, I got to deburring and dimpling. I worked on the ribs and reinforcement plates, leaving the spar and skins until another boring day.

asdf

One kind-of-boring hour tonight. Maybe the next few sessions will pick up.

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Dimpled Right Aileron Leading Edge

September 15, 2011

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One picture today.

All I did was deburr and dimple the right aileron leading edge.

Shiny leading edge.

All I need to do now is edge finish and get the mating surfaces primed.

Then, cleco it to the spar, and get the right aileron skin in a place where I can start riveting.

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Deburred Right Aileron Spar

September 12, 2011

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Tonight was, once again, kind of a boring night.

After getting both ailerons mostly matchdrilled, I have a long road of prep ahead of me.

In about an hour tonight, all I managed to get done was the disassembly of the right aileron, plus some edge-finishing, deburring, and dimpling of the right aileron spar and reinforcement plates. (I started with those, because I can get those prepped, primed, and riveted before diving into more boring deburring. Getting pieces riveted together really re-motivates me…even if it’s just a few rivets.

Got the right aileron disassembled.

After edge finishing ALL OF THE LIGHTENING HOLES….jeesh, I looked through the manual and all over the plans for any clue on whether to countersink or dimple the aileron spar.

All I could find was something that said, “disassemble, deburr, dimple, and prime the components. Oh, and countersink the counterbalance pipe.”

So, it SOUNDS like dimpling the other parts are correct. What about the internet? Not much help there. Thanks a lot, Google.

Anyway, I gave the dimpling a shot on one of the #30 holes on the bottom of the spar, and stuck a CSP-4 (is that the rivet number?) in there. Looks pretty good to me. What do you think?

Looks good from here.

So, carefully watching for any flange distortion (there wasn’t any), I dimpled the bottom flange with a #30 dimple die and dimpled the top flange with a #40.

All done for the night.

That was about an hour, and while I could have started on the other one, I decided to pay a little attention to my family.

Puppies, here I come!

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Deburred and Scuffed Aileron Stiffener Holes

August 29, 2011

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Umm, this is a pretty boring update, but I had to do something outside tonight. I grabbed an oversize drill bit and a scotchbrite square and did some duburring and scuffing of the stiffener holes in both aileron skins.

Tools of the trade.

I told you it was boring. 0.5 hour.

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I Hate Dimpling Stiffeners

August 24, 2011

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Well, can you guess what the airplane-building activity was? Maybe from the title?

Yup, you guessed right. Deburring and Dimpling stiffeners.

Here are the tools of the trade. An oversize drill bit, spun in the fingers to deburr. And, my normal dimple dies in my economy squeezer.

After one stiffener...

After 32 stiffeners.

For some excitment tonight (since otherwise, it would be a little lacking), let’s break out the calculator.

2 ailerons, 2 sides per aileron = 4 aileron sides.

4 aileron sides, 8 stiffeners per side = 32 stiffeners.

32 stiffeners, 7 holes per stiffener = 224 holes dimpled.

224 holes dimpled, 2 sides per hole = 448 deburred hole sides

448 deburred hole sides, 2 spins per hole = 896 spins of the drill bit.

My thumb and fore-finger hurt.

0.5 hour.

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Started Deburring and Dimpling Right Wing Ribs

July 28, 2011

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Well, not much tonight, except a complete lack of motivation. I move the right upper inboard wing skin over to the left wing (just to hang there) while I started deburring and dimpling the right wing ribs.

I decided to only deburr and dimple the upper side of the ribs. I’m going to leave the lower side as-is so I can 50% cleco the lower skin (when able) to the skeleton while riveting the upper skin in place.

Action shot of me dimpling the ribs.

I was planning to be out in the garage for an hour and a half, but my boredom got the best of me and I quit after a (hot) half hour.

I told you it wasn’t exciting.

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Finished Drilling Right Top Skins, Started Deburring

July 25, 2011

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So, while today is probably kind of boring for you…it’s exciting for me.

Why is it exciting for me? you ask…

Because I’m starting on the wing skins, and that means that coming up is some wing skin riveting, and that means that pretty soon, I’m going to have WINGS in my garage.

(Oh, also, I tricked the girlfriend into putting in some manual labor on the airplane. Ha. I’m so sneaky.)

First thing’s first. I ordered two new camera batteries. The one in the camera taking the picture says “12/09.” (Thanks, sister! Still one of the most used Christmas presents of all time! The one that replaced was the original from my Aunt Jan way back in 2002. Whoa.)

Now I'll never be out of camera go-juice.

Okay, let’s get on with it. A few days ago, I was clecoing on the top skins and realized that I hadn’t finished matchdrilling them. I think I only got half of them done. (I’ll go check my entries from then…)

So, back to 50% clecoed, and out came the air drill.

Okay, let's get to drilling.

After a loud 30 minutes of match drilling (“making loud noises”), I brought the wingwalk doubler and inboard top skin into the kitchen for some deburring and scuffing.

In the middle of deburring and scuffing the right wingwalk doubler.

After mucho mucho more cramping fingers minutes, I had some deburred and scuffed inboard wing skins.

Interior side...

...and exterior side.

Next up for these will be to dimple, then prime, then rivet to the wing (after prepping the corresponding ribs).

Before that, though, let’s get the outboard top skin done.

1.0 hour.

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