Wings 65, Total 528 Riveting tie downs and rear spars

Finally got to start pounding some rivets over the holiday weekend and tonight. Also hosted a small party of fellow RV builders and flyers whom I have befriended over the past few years. It was a really fun party with a movie night to cap off the evening. I showed the movie 6 days and 7 nights from a projector and bed sheet movie screen I rigged up in the garage. This setup worked really well, and I can't wait till I do it again. If it wasn't for hurricane force winds throughout the day it would have been perfect.

With everything primed, it was now time to start riveting parts. I started with the spacers for the tie down brackets. They are riveted to the back side of each tie down bracket, and the shop heads of the rivets hold the nut plate that will secure the mounting bolt for the aileron belcrank brackets.

After trying to squeeze the frist set of spacers by holding everything in my hand like an idiot, and having one rivet end up displacing one side of one nut plate just a bit, I wised up and secured everything in the vise as follows:

Here is the nut plate that got botched up. For now I am leaving it as is, but I may drill it out and replace the whole nut plate. I wanted to see if the bolt would still seat properly in the threads of the nut plate after the tie down bracket was bolted to the spar. It did cause some problems, but the threads finally grabbed the nut plate and I was able to secure the bolt.

It was stupid to try to squuze these rivets without properly securing the work, and this is the result. Sometimes I just never learn I guess. These rivets are long - AN426AD3-7s, and they are a pain to drill out. I had to do it three times, adn will probably need to do it two more times to replace and realign this nut plate properly.

And here it is mounted to the front of the spar:

And here is what the other side looks like before it is mounted to the wing spar:

The right side bracket turned out much better. Amazing what happens when you properly secure the work.

Now for the execution of another hard lesson that I learned long ago. I needed to drill out the bolt holes for all four aileron belcrank mounting brackets. It starts with a number 13 drill bit, followed by a number 12 reamer for AN3 bolts.

Here is a pic of the front side of the spar with everything mounted and bolted into position:

and the back side where the aileron belcrank brackets are mounted:

In order to properly torque all of the mounting bolts, I needed to obtain a 1/4 inch extenstio so that the torque wrench could clear the flanges of the wing spar. I also purchased a reversable 3/8 inch adn 1/4 inch adapter - all from Sears.

One note about the aileron belcrank mounting brackets - Thank you Dan Checkoway for pointing this out. IF you bolt them to the spar, there is no way to insert the long bolt that secures the belcrank to the mounting brackets.It will not clear the flanges of the wing spar. So the only way to mount the aileron belcranks to the mounting brackets is to remove the mounting brackets from the spar, install the bolt and belcrank losely in between the mounting brackets, and then re-install the mounting bracket/belcrank assembly to the spar. I wanted to verify the fit of the bolts to the nut plates, so I went ahead and mounted the brackets to the spar anyway, but I will need to remove them to install the belcrank when the time comes.

Now on to the rear spar riveting - Yipppie! I managed to get all the rivets slammed for the left rear spar tonight, and plan on riveting the right rear spar tomorrow. It took a couple of hours for me to get everything clampled and secured and riveted, but it was methodical, and my clamping process seemed to work out great. Here is the entire assembly ready for riveting on the benches. I secured oine end in the vice in between two pieces of wood, and the other end was angled downward until it touched the work bench. I used my 4x4 clamping blocks to secure the remaining parts of the spar as shown.

I had to get a bit creative about the clamping process. Here are a couple of pics that show how I did it. Clearing the z bend flanges in the sapr was a bit of a challenge, but I devised a way to do this that actually worked quie well.

For riveting, I found that using masking tape on the tip of the rivet set helps prevent smilies and other dings. I take a piece of tape dn lay it over the rivet set, then use rivet to form the dpression in the top of the AN470 rivet set, and then trim away the excess tape with an Xacto knife. The tape will last for several rivets, and then you need to unplug the air from the rivet gun, adn place a new piece of tape on the rivet set again. It really helps keep the rivet heads and skins from being damaged. As you get better with the riveting technique you don't need to rely on it as much, but every once in a while you get a surprise rivet that causes some problems, so you just never know....

The rivet call outs for the aileron support brackets on the rear spar can be a bit confusing, so you need to study the plans carefully to fully understand which holes should be riveted now, and which holes need to reamin open until the other parts such as ribs and gap seals and hinge brackets are added later in during the build of the wings. Each support bracket is a bit different from the other. I studied pics frm other build sites adn compared them to the plans to verify the way that the rivets need to be set. Here is the end bracket all rivetwd up. The green tape marks the holes that are not to be riveted yet. I chose to insert clecoes into some of these holes to help secure the parts better during riveting. I will remove the tape when I am satisfied that all the rivets have been properly set during this part of the build.

Just six rivets for the bracket on the outboard end of the spar:

And here is the inboard support bracket with just 5 rivets for now:

And here is the inboard end of the spar with the doublers riveted in place. All of the AN470 rivets were bucked with the rivet gun and the Fat Man bucking bar, and they turned out great. In fact, I only had to drill out one rivet, and that was because after I set it the shop head appeared to be cracked for some reason. That was a defective rivet, and it needed to come out and be replaced by another one. Still love that AN470 rivet removal tool. Worth every penny I paid for it. Just wish it was a bit less wide so it wcould be used to remove rivets inside rib flanges and such. It won't work very well in those situations so you have to make certain you set thosee rivets properly.

I will rivet the right rear spar tomorrow night and then move on to ribs - lots and lots of rib prep on deck next.