I had the internal parts all drilled and deburred last time, so it was right to the riveting. Knowing what was coming I was better prepared this time for dealing with the actuator bracket and so it didn't take a lot of time to deal with that. The hinge brackets went on quickly too and there I was putting the skins on already.
This time I was very careful not crease the wing and I put a layer of cardboard (the corrugated type) between the wooden board I used for pressing down the skin and the aluminum. This worked just fine.
I didn't take photos until I was over the stage of riveting one side of the skins on and I had to turn it over to prepare the other side. Call me superstitious, but it worked.
The second side was riveted successfully, too and it was then on to put the outboard nose skin on. This one is the only tricky one as it has to smoothly flow around the counterbalance weight tube as well. I riveted every other rivet in the bottom line along the spar first, then turned it over to do every other rivet on the top spar line and then the leading edge line before doing the rest. I believe it distributed the tension a bit and made it follow the line a bit smoother.
The fit was much better than with the left flaperon and so the riveting went pretty quickly. Remember, I had drilled the leading edge holes with a hand drill!
The other nose skins came on after this, after a lot of deburring to make sure the overlapping skins wouldn't cut each others. A lot of riveting again, it's amazing how many rivets are just in the flaperons... On the middle and outboard skin I riveted the bottom spar line first.
Then I turned the flaperon over and tried to pull the skin back with one hand and put a cleco in with the other. No chance! The skin was really resisting to get into its required shape. In lieu of a helper I used a piece of blue tape to hold the skin down after pushing it down with both hands so I could get a cleco started. After the first one is in, the rest follows easily. Soon the top was riveted too.
The last step is to put the clevises in but I haven't had enough energy to do this tonight and left it for tomorrow. After all it requires some precise measurement and medium strength Loctite to hold it in place. A real good chance to mess something up.
By the way, I took a look at the profile of the flaperon. This right looks much more like I had imagined it. I'm still not sure what all went wrong on the left side to cause so much more trouble ... I think I have to be very careful to fix all these things when I revisit the left flaperon.
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