I set my first rivet! I had to rivet the elevator hinge bracket around the elevator bearing with six rivets squeezed with my pneumatic squeezer. This was fairly simple and turned out looking pretty good.
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| First rivet of thousands! |
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| Front side of the bracket all riveted |
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| A view of the back side |
After that, I worked at shaping the reinforcement angles that will attached to the forward spar. I had to round off the ends and then bend them 6 degrees, according to the plans. This was pretty simple and they turned out pretty well.
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| Angles shaped |
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| Angles bent |
Next, I started work on the front spar. The front spar comes in two pieces. These were designed for use on the RV-8 and have to be trimmed down for use on the RV-7. I got the spar flanges cut back according to the plans and then created bend reliefs so I can bend the tabs appropriately. I used my flies to create these reliefs, but the plans say to use a drill and then files. It probably would've been easier had I used the drill first, but they still turned out pretty well.
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| Forward spar flanges cut back |
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| Reliefs started... had to make them a bit deeper with my files |
To finish out a productive day, I cut two of the front ribs according to the plans. The aft flanges on these ribs have to be cut to allow them to fit around the reinforcing angles I worked on earlier.
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| Aft flanges of the ribs cut |
This was a really productive day. I hope every weekend day will be this productive, but I know life will get in the way sometimes. I'm already finding myself losing time on the project to doing stuff with my friends. But I'm OK with that... I don't know how long I'll live in California and I want to take advantage of that while I'm here. This all just goes back to my insistence that I not have a set timeline for my project. As long as I'm working consistently on the project, I'll be happy.
