Well, today I couldn't resist starting on one of the practice kits I bought. I decided to put off the inventory of the wing kit for now and begin my first experience working with metal. I opened up the toolbox practice kit's instruction packet and jumped right in.
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| My first attempt at deburring... not terrible |
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| First use of clecos (awesome!) |
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| My first attempt at dimpling... came out pretty well (I think) |
So I had done pretty well up to this point in the project. I was able to figure pretty much everything out. It felt great to be learning so much about my tools and these processes. Keep in mind, prior to this I've had no experience working with any of these types of tools. So I'm still on a steep learning curve, but it is really exciting to be learning about this stuff... I've spent so much time reading about it but now I'm actually doing it! Anyway, now these three parts were ready to rivet... ohhhh boy. I just decided to go right for it. I tried using my squeezer first, but couldn't quite get it figured out so I went for the rivet gun and my tungsten bucking bar. WOW... it's no joke! There's not a ton of room for error on these little rivets. My rivets came out OK (kind of), but I am definitely going to want more practice with them before I start using them on my airplane.
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| Left side rivets... definitely a few bad ones! |
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| Left side exterior |
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| Right side rivets... slightly better than the first batch |
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| Ride side exterior |
You can see some of the marring on the skin in the exterior shots. I was disappointed in this and took to Van's Air Force to figure out a way to avoid that. Some improvement in that will just come with practice and learning to better control the rivet gun, but I also found that putting tape over the rivets can help protect the skin, too. I'll try that next time I rivet on the project. I was able to figure out my squeezer and used it on a few of the right-side rivets. The squeezer puts out a nice rivet, but it wasn't quite as easy to figure out as I thought it would be. More practice will smooth out the wrinkles I'm sure. I decided to get some practice at drilling out rivets today, too... not because the rivets needed to be drilled out, but just because I wanted to get the practice. HA! I figured out how to drill out the bad rivets pretty quickly and was able to do it without enlarging any of the holes much at all.
After my first rivets and some dinner, I got around to fitting and drilling my hinges. I was able to figure that out pretty quickly and it seems to have turned out well.
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| Fitting and match-drilling hinges |
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| Hinges drilled and clecoed in place |
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| Hinges work! |
I decided this was a good stopping point for the night. I want to get a little practice spraying primer, so I am going to do that on the lid tomorrow. I've never used a paint gun before, so the learning curve is only bound to get steeper. I'm looking forward to it.
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| Practice kit set aside for the night |
Today was awesome! I've seen so many other people's construction logs, seen these tools in use so many times on those logs, and read up on so many of these techniques. Today I got to finally do it all for myself. It felt surreal and exciting. I have a long way to go before I'm a pro (or even just good), but it was a good start. I look forward to getting with some of the guys in the EAA chapter to get some feedback on my work and find out where I can make improvements.
Time to get some rest so I can get back after it tomorrow morning!
