Spars

Riveted the reinforcement bars, and 707-D, E and F on the rear spars today using the pneumatic squeezer and the longeron yoke. Some of the holes where tight because of the primer so I had to ream those out a bit with the reamer.

I finished deburring and preparing both the rear spars, alumiprepped them and put a coat of primer on them and on the 707-D, E, F and G parts. Man painting those spars took some time and two rattle cans of primer. I did it outside as my paint shed is not big enough to put the whole spars in and due to a bit of wind, much of the paint blue away. Worked out in the end though. In the first picture, Argo is looking at me and is probably thinking 'what the heck is that guy doing?'.

I also have started to put the aluminum angle on the wing stand posts. Need to get a new bolt/nut pair tomorrow as one of the ones I got today had a bad thread. Also the 1/8" angle seems a bit floppy; I might get some 1/4" instead.

No pictures today. Just lots more deburring and processing parts with scotchbrite pad to prepare for priming. Also dimpled the 707-F plates on the edge and dimpled the flanges of the rear spars where the 707-E and F plates are. All 707-D, E, F and G parts have been alumi-prepped and will be primed tomorrow.

Finished match-drilling of the reinforcement bars, 707-E plates and 707-F plates to the rear spars and drilled out the first aileron pushrod hole in the left 707-E. I started by using my biggest unibit in my drill press.

I then used my new dremel (for the first time!) to smooth out the edges of the hole and make it fit with the rear spar by clamping the two together. Finished it off by using some scotchbrite pad on all the edges.

Tomorrow I'm planning to do the second pushrod hole and start dimpling the flanges of the rear spars. You'll have to this at least in the places where the reinforcement bars are going to be as there is no way you can get in there after these are riveted on.

Had a pretty bad cold yesterday so I watched the remaining episodes of battlestar galactica season 3 :-) Now that I'm done with that, I got some good time in the shop again tonight. I further deburred and cleaned up the edges of the rear spars with file, emery cloth and scotchbrite pad. I then cut (using a hacksaw), filed, and scotchbrite-padded the reinforcement bars and both 707-D's to specs (as shown on drawing 38A). I started with both the reinforcement bars.

Followed by drawing the contour of the edge on 707-D and cutting it the same way with the hacksaw. Again followed by some time on the scotchbrite wheel.

This was followed by cleco'ing both these sandwiched structures to the rear spars.

The next thing was clamping 707-E and 707-F plates to the rear spars.

It was then easy to matchdrill all four plates to the spars.

Tomorrow I'll match-drill the reinforcement bars to the spars and start deburring all the rivet holes.

I finished mounting the tiedown brackets and aileron brackets today.

Started to edge debur both rear spars, the reinforcement forks and the doubler plates.

A long and productive day where I got a lot done. It's really nice to be in the shop again after such a long break between the tail and the wings. I finished all the platenuts on both spars today (tank, access plates and center spar attachements).

I cut the tiedown brackets to length, threaded them and fabricated the spacers for the tiedown structure.

I dimpled the access plates for number 6 and 8 screws.

After that drilled all the holes in the tiedown structure to mount them to the spars.

And mounted the platenuts for the aileron bellcrank brackets.

When that was all done I alu-etched and primed all the parts and riveted the structure together.

Spent more time on countersinking all the holes in both spars. After having put a dab of alodine in all the holes using the Touch-n-Pen, I called it a night and went in the house to watch an episode of Battlestar Galactica Series 3. It's hard to choose between the plane and Galactica sometimes :-)

Finished countersinking the platenut rivet holes and started to countersink the platenut screw holes (#8 screws). I've made a nifty little tool for this which I borrowed the design from http://www.rv7factory.com for. It is basically a thick piece of aluminum with two rivets in it sandwiched on top by another piece of aluminum. Here's a picture of it:

Just clamped this on the spar flange and use the microstop countersink tool to do the work. I actually changed from two to one clamp which worked fine.

I managed to got the tops of both spars done using this method. Tomorrow I'll finish the rest.

Today the real work has started. I've match-drilled the holes for the platenut rivet holes in both spars and countersunk these holes for the right spar and one side of the left spar. I found the right depth of the countersink using a scrap piece of metal.

These came out real nice.