Did I say I wanted to build a bit slower the other day? I must have been hallucinating. Either that or it is just incredibly hard for me to slow down. It is just too much fun to let it sit. Sigh!
As I said before I wanted to just slide the skins on and see how they fit. I know, I should have done that before priming as any adjustments that required removing metal would have also caused to re-prime. Well, I was too confident and got lucky as the skins really just came on easy. The radii of the forward ribs fit perfectly and nothing was resisting the skins to bend smoothly around the leading edge.
So, I thought, why not just cleco them on and keep them in this position for now ... Well, you know how this will end, right?
You got it! I just kept on clecoing and then I thought, well this went smooth, maybe I should just turn the thing over and do the other side as well. And that's just what I did. The only mistake I made here was to not question the manuals direction enough that said cleco top and bottom of ONE skin first, then rivet both surfaces and THEN work on the other skin. I couldn't figure out why I should flip the Stabilator over and over when I can also do all that with only two turn overs and be done.
Well the reason escaped me at that point but while I was happily clecoing away it started to dawn on me that I just won't have enough clecos to finish the job. I think Van's suggested 350 copper clecos and that's just what I had. My guess is that it takes about 450-500 to fully cleco the Stabilator with both skins on both sides. That is if you follow the other direction that explicitly said in two locations, cleco every hole on both surfaces! I didn't want to screw up the skins by introducing any tension or twist, so I did just as directed. My Avery cleco tool was a life saver here!
No harm done though, so I had less to cleco and more time left. Any idea what I might have done next? Exactly! Well, so far so good I thought, maybe I should just do a few rivets as this is the part that I love anyway.
So I started the slow riveting process beginning on the leading edge and going aft one rivet at the time. I stopped at the spar and just took out every other cleco here to speed up the next riveting run. I don't think that doing this along the spar could introduce any tensions or twists.
But that job is something for during the week. I'm tired now and I didn't even take my time for dinner ...
No comments:
Post a Comment