9/7/2006
After a night off, it was nice getting some good time in the shop tonight. Before I started working, I decided to make the modification to the compressor tank drain that I had seen recently in one of the newsletters. The one that came with the compressor was awkward to get at, and hard to open. So I made this runner with a ball valve to make tank draining easier.
That took longer than I had hoped...what's new...
A friend of mine, Larry Enyeart, had volunteered to come over to help me get started on the bottom skin rivets this evening since my dad is busy with photography stuff. But, with my little valve drain project running farther in to the evening than I had hoped, I called Larry back, and told him not to head over since it was getting later. Anyway, I decided to go it alone and shoot 'em solo. This riveting solo thing isn't so bad, really. I surprised myself the other day when riveting solo, so I've gained some trust in myself to do it again. I began by putting the left wing on the table (my dad did run over to help me do this).
I started by tying the skin back to the rear, per the plans for shooting solo, in order to have access to the rear spar rivets.
I also used some pitot line (the green tubing) to line the lightening holes to save from mangling my forearms, like so many builders like to do...
Those are absolutely wonderful, and worked great! I had no marks on my skin after setting those hard to reach rivets. My wrist contorting in strange directions was another thing, but it was doable. I followed instructions to a "T" on this part, and it worked out fine. After riveting the first two bays of wing walk ribs, I tied off the skin towards the root to start working on the third rib. By the way, the first rib will get riveted later with the squeezer.
I didn't get the inboard skin finished, but the wing walk section is done, and the top and bottom row of spar rivets are done to the first rib outboard of the wing walk.
I pressed on each shop head with the tip of my finger, and using that as a gauge, they all look and feel pretty good. Not perfect, but none needed drilled.
3.0 hours