More Main Spar Prep – 3.0 hrs

Saturday August 14, 2010

This morning I got an hour and a half in the shop before getting ready to drive my daughter’s stuff back to college. I say her stuff because she has too much to haul in her car alone so I drove another car the 90 or so miles to Santa Clarita to carry the rest.

Before I left I continued countersinking and I primed some of the holes with Stewart Systems white primer. I just used a Q tip with a very small amount on it, spinning it between my fingers to paint a thin layer on the bare material. Here are some examples.

When I got back from Santa Clarita I set about riveting nut plates to the spar flanges. There are a lot of nut plates so this took some time. The most time consuming part is setting up each nut plate with a cleco and a rivet making sure the rivet sits flush. Then I use my pneumatic squeezer to set all the 3/32 flush rivets except six on each flange that are too close to the web for a clean shot. Those I bucked with a flush set and a tungsten bar. You can see the strip of duct tap I put on the web to keep from dinging up that nice anodized surface. Not a scratch.

Here as a row of nut plates shown from the flush side of the rivets. I had used the Vans method of countersinking with the nut plate as a guide. They all look nice and concentric. The tap along the flange is to keep metal chips from getting into the crack between the pieces of the spar. The tiny pieces can get wedged into the crack and are a bear to remove. The tape save time by preventing that.

We had dinner plans with friends tonight so time in the shop was limited again. That’s life.