Tuesday, May 11, 2010

A good day at the factory

Yesterday evening I had a real good time at the aircraft factory! At least, that's what I'm thinking now as I haven't found other issues yet I might have created.
I copied the assembly preparation for the left upper and lower spar cap from the already finished right side. This time, though, without making the same mistakes again!
I've also learned how to avoid having different results with the countersinking cage for every hole dealt with. My friend Tom who built an RV-6A told me to go real slow in RPMs when using the cage. So I put the cage on my electric screwdriver and - voila - no vibrations that elongate a hole and a nice and repeatable(!) depth. I tried to use the drill press, too, but it created the same problems as my pneumatic Sioux drill did and I even tried to slow the drill press down to around 500 RPM. Either way, I got different depths and sometimes elongated holes. The screwdriver is the way to go for me.
So far I've spent about 14 hours working on metal.
Sorry, no photos yet, I was too tired last night when leaving the factory.
Oh, because my Cortec primer (VpCI-373) is not going to be here soon, I ordered some rattle cans of Tempo Zinc Phosphate to get started with the riveting. It will also help with priming small amounts of parts that wouldn't justify the setup and cleaning of the paint gun.

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