The Loctite is supposed to cure for 24h so I left the flaperon on the main work bench and as the secondary work bench is covered with tools, I need a place where I could start building the fuselage. The folding tables are really universal!
Then, right on the first step of working on the wing receptacle of the fuselage something happened that hasn't happened during the hole build before and that I had read so much about in Dave's blog! A pop rivet's mandrel broke off in the riveter. It's this kind of rivet Dave had complained about so often, the CC264 a small AD3 size pop rivet that I had no problems with before. I used a full size hand riveter when it just broke off.
And then it happened again, right on the same nutplate with the same riveter. Incredible! I then used the close quarter riveter for the next nutplate and everything worked ok. I wonder if it's a riveter or a rivet problem. The ones I had before where black in color with a silvery mandrel. The set I got with the fuselage kit are all gold.
The rivets sit tight and using a hammer you can punch the mandrel out the other way. That's ok with this type of rivet as the mandrel isn't supposed to break anyway but gets completely pulled through the hollow rivet.
After this little intermezzo I went on to the real job in this section. Matchdrilling! Therefore you have to place the wing receptacle with the rear bulkhead clamped to it onto the bottom skin and cleco the bottom flanges to the skin. This sounds easy but it isn't. The problem is the size, weight and flimsiness of the parts involved.
Basically you have to get access to the bottom of the skin to cleco the flanges while the heavy center section is attached to the skin. All without bending and possibly damaging that large but thin bottom skin. I saw in Dave's blog that he flipped the parts upside down which is hard to do alone and you need a lot of support piece that I just didn't have to keep the parts straight which I just didn't have. So I came up with something else that I could do alone. I built up some support on the bottom where the skin rest on securely while giving me access to the center section to cleco the flange to it.
Well, this look ok to work on but you didn't see the trick yet. A shot from the side that shows the tunnel that I built to get access to those vital holes. Just enough room for a hand with a pair of cleco pliers holding a cleco. Clecos already put in for clarity :-)
The rear bulkhead is a bit shorter, so the whole section was leaning towards me when I was trying to drill a straight hole in this piece. To make it easier for me to see the reflection in the aluminum I supported the rear bulkhead side (which is the front in the picture) a bit more before starting drilling.
Ready to go! God, I always loved my little Sioux drill but today I found out how much I really love it! This little devil was eating through that thick aluminum angle that was supposed to get match drilled like it was butter. I put a new drill bit in after I had possibly dulled it a bit drilling the counterbalance tubes, but still - the drill did a great job - while being not too loud at all.
I think it took about 6 seconds per hole. I added a drop of Boelube for every hole to make sure the cut off would easily move out of the hole during drilling. About half time after around 45 minutes as I was very careful making sure the hole was perpendicular to the surface.
And another 45 minutes later it was done. What a mess on the floor though!
Cleaned up the mess and took two more photos to verify that I did a pretty good job staying straight while drilling. Yeah, I need that pad on the shoulder after the left flaperon experience.
I took the parts apart and deburred the match-drilled holes before calling it day in the shop. That was a nice start in a new section!
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