Jack Savage joined me today to help teach me proper riveting technique. I have squeezed rivets and back riveted before, but I’ve never really used a gun and bucking bar, so I wanted some practice. Jack walked me through the remainder of my practice kit. He also gave me a lot of advice regarding tools and shop setup. It was a great learning experience.
Today, I finished several tasks. First, I dimpled both of the horizontal stab skins. I drilled the new holes that will bracket the mistake I made a few weeks back, and finally I primed all the remaining horizontal stab parts to include the insides of the skins. Productive day!
First up are pics of my fix for the dimple mistake I made. I used the digital calipers to precisely mark the exact center locations between the bad dimple and the rivets on either side. After marking the centerline it was a quick fix to drill, deburr and dimple the new holes.
Here are all the parts after priming. Now its time to rivet! I guess its time I learn how…. 🙂
Tonight I implemented the first part of my skin repair. I flattened the dimple, re-dimpled in the correct location, and drill stopped the crack. I’m not super happy with the result because the crack almost makes a complete circle… Still debating if I should add two additional rivets per below:
Here is my email to Van’s tech support:
Van’s Aircraft:
Seems like I’m making a lot of mistakes.Well, here’s my latest one:Doing my first dimpling on the HS 801 Skin and while I thought I had the skin on the dimple… it slipped. The “new” dimple is right next to the hole.This hole is in the center on the rear edge for attaching to the rear spar. I’ve included some pictures. Unfortunately, I cannot simply stop drill and continue.. neither a 3/32″ or a 1/8″ rivet will completely cover it. I don’t feel that one bad dimple requires a new skin, but I’m not sure how to best implement a fix.
Based on some threads I’ve read, this is what I’m currently thinking to do…. but I’m worried this might not be acceptable.
1. Stop drill the crack.
2. Drill the original hole to 1/8″
3. Dimple with 1/8″ die.
4. Rivet with 1/8″ rivet??
5. Add some type of filler…???I’ve seen alternate solutions such as adding another rivet next to the original hole, or leaving the rivet out entirely. I think any rivet has more strength than no rivet, so I don’t like the latter.
And their response:
There are a few options on how to fix this when you make a mistake like this. The first thing is to treat the area for cracks, normally it will tear the hole completely out so you can just run a drill bit thorough the hole and deburr like normal. In your case it did not brake the circle away but still may be better to just drill the effected area out. You can abandon this hole and
add a rivet to ether side or add the two and still install this one for looks. You can drive this rivet with the addition of JB weld to fill the void and add some structural stability. The other options would be to replace the skin if you don’t want your friends to see what you did.
