2004 Flight from KKLS

2004 Flight from KKLS
This photo is from when I was flying the airplane out of Longview, WA. This was taken early in the morning..

RV-6 #25188 in flight

RV-6 #25188 in flight
Doug Eves sent this photo of the Ol' girl in flight. Taken from the ground, this is a great shot. You can see he is "relaxing" in his office in the sky...

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Top skin riveted on!

My friend Roger from work came over the other night and helped me backrivet the top wing skin on. I had everything ready to go for him. Roger is an electrician at work and most electricians are very detailed oriented. For never having bucked a rivet in his life, Roger was very good at being able to tell the difference of a good rivet or one that is slightly flawed. Out of several hundered rivets, we only had to change out a couple. I was glad that he was able to help me get over this impass and I will see if he can help me on the other backriveting projects.
The quality of the riveting was top notch and I am happy with the results. I dimpled my skin on my C-frame. The frame is braced underneath with a steel bar that goes all the way down to the floor. So when I impacted the dies, there is no give to the frame at all. The other thing I do when I get the skin clecoed in place is to slighty shave out the dimple with my deburring tool. This helps the rivet lay in there flat so the edges don't stick up. If I can't snag the edge of the rivet head with my fingernail, then it's in there good. This way when I go to paint the skins, the paint won't build up and ring around the head. You can see this on some airplanes that are painted in darker colors. The paint will bridge and ring so it does not go all the way down into the dimple. Since I will most likely paint my wings blue/white, I wanted them to be perfect. Now I set the bar so high, I will have to keep it there.

Thanks for the help Roger.

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