After relatively good success and only a few bad rivets on the rear spar assembly that had to be drilled out, I started on the forward spar of the horizontal stabilizer. This proved to be a much more challenging experience. My success to failure ratio of riveting the forward spar together was only slightly more than 50%. That means for every two rivets I tried to put in, one of them was bad and had to be redone. Not a very good percentage, and certainly not very good for the self confidence factor either. This is a close up shot of the area where 4 very tightly spaced structural rivets are attaching multiple parts together, including the forward spar, two angle support brackets, and the inboard nose rib. If you blow this pic up you will see smiley faces all over the place. This is what happens when the rivet set becomes uncentered and starts to dig into the surrounding metal. It all happens in the blink of an eye. Another problem I encountered was the fact that the smily face on the second rivet from the top was so bad, that it forced the flange of the nose rivet to bend outward just a bit, so the mating surface between the spar and the nose rib flange is not fully in tact. I talked to Van's about this and they said that as long as the shop heads (on the other side of the rivets in this pic) are OK, this should not pose a problem. The skins are also part of the structure that provides the overall strength of the stabilizer, and they will serve to add strength to this entire area once they are riveted in place. So I left this "as is" and will build on.
Another Shot showing how the flange is bowed out from the spar flange just a bit. These surfaces should be flat against each other.
Rear side shop heads of the same area. These are meeting size and circumference measurements so I am leaving them as is.
Mine 'scalloped' like that a little too. I think it is common since I have seen quite a few pics that show this. Build on is the right choice.
ReplyDelete