Here comes Carol and her entourage down to help. She's going to help me remove the blue plastic from the wing skins. The dogs will most likely wait patiently until our hands are full or we are otherwise preoccupied and then misbehave somehow. Roxy will lick you persistently, with much determination and no mercy whatsoever. Trina, on the other hand, will run out of the shop carrying a tool, a glove, or just a piece of paper. Looking over her shoulder all the while, she wants someone to chase her.
After the blue plastic is remove along the rivet lines, the edges of the skin are smoothed and the inside rivet lines are primed.
The little block of wood is used to turn down the edge of the skin slightly where it will overlap another skin. This helps keep the edge down tight after the skin is riveted. Once the skins are debured they will be dimpled and be ready to be riveted to the wing.
Here I am, up to my armpit in airplane. I'm still working on getting the leading edge ribs attached to the spar. In my previous post, I had planed to use pull rivets since it's very difficult to get rivet gun or bucking bar inside.
After having mentioned my difficulties with this section at our local Experimental Aircraft Association meeting, I was offered help in getting these most difficult rivets set. I didn't want to pass up this opportunity to learn from more experienced builders and so, on the following weekend Keith Pederson came over to help out. He took the more difficult position of bucking from inside, while I shot from underneath with the offset rivet set.
Unfortunately, there was no one else present to capture any of the excitement for posterity. After about 3 hours we had 10 ribs in 2 wings solidly attached. Yes, there was some bloodshed. And yes, at one point we had hundreds of rivets spilled on the floor. But we persevered and now I can move forward. Thanks Keith.
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