My friend Andre stopped by tonight and helped me rivet the parts of the flaps and ailerons that are easier with two people. We started on the ailerons by screwing them down to a couple of boards clamped to the bench. This made the ailerons rigid enough to rivet. We only drove the rivets along the top of the spar that must be shot/bucked. The end ribs can be squeezed and the bottom of the spar uses blind rivets.
We shot and bucked all of the rivets holding the flap skins together and to the ribs. We then planned on riveting the top of the spar, but I really need to get the hang of shooting and bucking by myself since there will be a lot more of that with the fuselage. Since Andre has always been so willing to stop by and give me a hand (which I’m eternally grateful for), I really haven’t done much solo work with the rivet gun. I set a few just to see how they turned out, and they all look great. I can easily finish these by myself.
The aileron brackets would be a little tougher though, so I had him give me a hand riveting these on. Once the ailerons are done, they will be ready to hang on the wing.
I picked up my aileron pushrods from the welder today, and they look fantastic. They had to grind off some of the powder coat and machined the cadmium plating off of the mating surface of the rod end before TIG welding them. I’m going to clean these up and then put a fresh coat of epoxy primer on them before installing them on the wing.
