Last night I did manage to dimple all the inboard top side main rib flanges with the pneumatic squeezer. I also removed the inner clecoes from the fuel tank baffle and Z brackets, deburred the holes on the inside of the baffle plate, and re-clecoed the inner and outer ribs of the fuel tank to the tank skin again and the baffle plate. Then I clecoed the inner skin and wing walk doubler back to the frame, and checked the fit of the wing top edge of the skin dimples inserted into the slightly over countersunk holes, and the fit is really nice.
Seeing that, I could not resist but to secure the fuel tank to the screw holes in the wing spar again by using #30 clecoes inserted all the way through the nut plates. Then I pulled some of the blue vinyl away from the tank skin so I could check the fit between the edges of the tank skin and the inner wing skin section, and it looked awesome. I could see no gaps along the edges of the skins at all - everything nice and flush.
I even tried out my new die grinder from HF with a 3 inch 180 grit sanding attachment on some scrap metal, and boy does that thing remove metal fast. I'll have to do this very sparingly when i create the scarf joint, and maybe the cordless drill is the better option for that so I don't remove too much metal too quickly. I was glad I still had 2 mini air hose connectors, one of which I attached to the air inlet of the tool, similar to my other commonly used tools like the squeezer, drill, and rivet gun.
In fact, I think that is the best next step - fabricate the scarf joint between the two skin sections, while the fuel is still secured to the wing spar, and then remove the outer skin to finish re-countersinking all those other remaining holes on both sides of the wing spar.
Thursday, October 12, 2017
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