Saturday, November 6, 2010

Left Wing Almost Done

So I went back to the wing doubler that I had left in the evening. The fit was really off and I decided to remove it. After reading a bit about other experiences with the doubler on the Van's Airforce Forum I decided to work around the problem of the pre-dimpled holes by clamping the doubler in a vise with wood as a buffer and bent it right behind the line of rivet holes, about 3/8" from the edge. This worked pretty well and a visible crease was created that ensured that once the rivets were set, the edge would still be in touch with the skin.



So I went on clecoed the doubler back in place and also got ready to finish the rest of the nose skins.


The riveting didn't take a lot of time and soon the wing looked like this:


Now it was time to turn the wing over again and get the inspection hatch installed. 10 nutplates had to get prepared and riveted in. A bit less than an hour later the hatch was installed.


That's how I left it. The wing would fly right now although the outboard area sure wouldn't look good. So, I'm not quite done just yet, but almost there.
BTW: Later I noticed that I will have to remove the hatch again and do some more work on it. It is currently slightly bulging inside and I want to bend it to follow the shape of the wing more. I might have to add a stiffener on the back if it wouldn't stay in its shape. Currently it just doesn't look nice.

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2 comments:

  1. DaveGJanuary 29, 2011 at 6:49 AM

    I was worried about my idea of using a vise to break the edge of the walkway doubler so I looked this morning to see what you did. I see you did it that way too!

    These blogs are really useful, aren't they? I don't know how people ever built airplanes without the internet.

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  2. TorstenJanuary 30, 2011 at 10:51 AM

    Glad I could help. Make sure you bend the inside of the doubler rivet line enough. Using a vise with "extended" brackets favored the corners to bend a bit more than the inner area of the rivet line. So you might feel that it is enough when you look at the corners and clecoing the thing on you discover that you still have major resistance on the inner holes.

    Yeah, I was wondering about the lack of forums and the internet in general in the old days, too. I guess they made this up by a lot of socializing at the local air strip(s), which doesn't happen here anymore. At least you don't see young blood showing up anymore. So there are always two sides to the story, I guess. But as a geek I sure enjoy I can spend more time building than chatting due to the endless source of information I have access to :-)

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