3/25/2007
Boy did I go thru a range of emotions today! Started out totally psyched about spending the entire day in the garage, which I did! I started early in the morning working on the airplane, then set things aside for a while to get the boat ready for water. This was all cool, until I finished everything (including running it), when I found an oil leak. Frustration. Anyway, back to the airplane. Happy! All is going well until the end. I'll explain below.
As I said, I started the day out on the airplane working on painting the F-705 bulkhead. I didn't take any pics of this. It's just paint, and I'll get a shot of it when it's put back together.
Then I dimpled the main center skin 776. Easy to do with the DRDT-2, but it took a while.
I wasn't going to prime this skin, but decided to if only for aesthetics of the center section.
The pic above was taken later in the day after I worked on putting the interior of the boat back together. I only mention that because this is the point where I took the time to work on the boat. After The boat was done, I came back to the center section, and fitted the seat ribs to the aft 704B bulkhead. I hadn't yet drilled the holes in the ribs for the AN3 bolts that attach the top and bottom, so I did that and deburred everything.
Then I installed the bolts and cleco'd the rivet holes. Riveting came next, and I started off with a bang...literally. After the first rivet was set perfectly, I set the gun down to put the next rivet in. When I set the gun down, I rubbed the regulator knob on the table, and the pressure was increased pretty dramatically...unbeknownst to me. The second rivet was hit repeatedly all over the place, and we're talking spar webbing there. To top it off, I'm using the tungsten bar. It slipped off the rivet, and did this...
I took a few pics of it with different light to get a really good idea of what happened here. I'm going to send them to Van's on Monday. This just dropped me. I was PISSED!! I looked it over really good, because I had initially thought that I ripped the webbing with the bar. Well, not even close to doing that, it did appear that way at first. I took a small break to cool down, and came back to rivet the rest of the ribs, and deal with this situation at the end. I knew exactly how it happened, so the next time I set the gun down, I made sure to watch the regulator knob, and check it before each successive use. The rest of the rivets are perfect.
This is certainly one area where using a tungsten bar can really muck things up. I honestly don't believe this would have been so severe with a traditional steel bar.
Anyway, I came back to the rivet, drilled it out, and fixed the mistake by sanding the surface down to get the scratches and dings out.
Then I reset that rivet with ease. The best thing about the tungsten bar, is the low pressure needed from the gun. Makes solo riveting a breeze! When the pressure is turned up, and you don't know it...beware!!
So, I finished that, and shot the sanded area with some primer, and I will topcoat it with some paint next time. I'm happy with the fix, and as long as Van's says don't worry about it, I won't either. If they say it needs to be replaced, well, I guess I'm shelling out some freakin' dough for a new 704B...
Here's the "finished" product from today.
5.25 hours