My mate Mitchell came down today and he gave me a hand in the shed. I was up to riveting the main ribs to the main spar. Whilst it is probably possible to rivet these solo, it was MUCH easier having a second set of hands. I was on the rivet gun and Mitch was on the bucking bar. I’m slightly embarrased to saw that he did a much better job that I did after 1 hour’s practice! Here is a shot of the first 3 rivets we did.
We proceeded to set the middle 3 rivets on the main ribs that connect to the main spar doubler. These require the slightly longer -7 rivets due to the extra thickness of the metal from the doubler plate. The main spar doubler doesn’t extend to the last few outer ribs so a shorter rivet is needed here. I left these outer ribs alone for now. This proceeded steadily until we got to the inboard wing walk ribs.
Due to the ribs being fairly close together I decided to remove the two inboard ribs to give me more room to get the rivet gun in there. This allowed me to set the outboard 2 wing walk ribs fairly easily. I also took the opportunity to set the rivets I couldn’t reach on the lower spar as well. Once I had all the rivets set I replaced the next inboard rib and set the rivets on the main spar end only. Due to the flap brace I didn’t set any rivets on the rear flange. I also left the inner most wing walk rib removed to allow future access. Here is a shot of how I left the wing walk ribs.
Here is a shot along the length of the left main spar showing the middle 3 rivets of the main ribs set. I need to apply tape to the main spar brace bars before I can set the upper and lower most rivets (where the clecoes are in this picture). This is so you dont scratch the main spar with the bucking bar when you set these rivets. You can also see Mitch checking out Facebook on his phone.
Here is how the wings looked when we finished up tonight. I removed the clecoes from the ribs that we set so they are ready for the remaining rivets to be set next session.
We were in the shed for 2.5 hours tonight. As there were two of us, I’m counting this as 5 build hours.
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