Today we finished deburring and dimpling all the holes in the skin. This takes far longer than it would seem. We also riveted the Vertical Stabilizer structure together. These 8 rivets proved to be a bigger challenged than I imagined. For one, the #30 rivets are pretty tough little buggers. For two, I haven’t riveted very much by hand (with bucking bar) and I couldn’t get my pneumatic squeezer on any of the rivets. Also, one of the ribs ends up making a concave angle with the front spar, not easy to get a bucking bar in there with the flange angles. Perhaps tungsten bucking bars that are smaller and heavier would make this easier?
In any case, the first rivet we tried to set started to clench so we decided to seek help instead of messing parts up. Our good friend and RV adviser gave us a hand. He had an alligator-type of pneumatic squeezer and AN442 flat rivets (in lieu of the universal head AN470’s). His squeezer could fit into the tight corners we were having a problem with. In a couple of the corners, it was still tricky and we had to drill one out and ended up needing to enlarge the hole and use a larger rivet. The AN442 rivets are a lot easier to work, I’m not sure why these aren’t the standard.
Tomorrow we’ll be ready to start riveting the skins together and hopefully have our first finish component. At the end of the day, looking at the pictures, it sure does seem easier than it actually is!
N928DD 