She's out of the jig

Well, after two days of marathon riveting with the Old Man, we have gotten the airplane out of the jig. She looks pretty good, although, I don't think I got as good as job as the last RV-6 you seen in the blog. I used some dimple dies that were made from Cleaveland tool and there are actually a little too big. The dimple or male part of the die is made too big and thus the rivet is set farther down in the hole. I got a set a while back after breaking my old pair of dies. They sent me out another set and it was noticeably bigger. I called them and they sent out another set that "looked OK". I made the mistake of using it on several skins before really setting any rivets from that die. The second set is still bigger than the set I got from Avery. Cleaveland tool has already has good products so I don't know what happened to their dies but I am not getting the smoothest set of bucked rivets on my bird as the last one. I am going to order another set from Avery for the top skins and boot cowl. I am not going to use the Cleaveland dies anymore.
Another thing that we had problems with is the hole size. Since the dies were too big, when you dimpled the skin, it made the hole too big. Then the rivet did not fill the hole up. If you did not get a perfect set on the rivets, the head would be offset in the dimple slightly.


I have ordered some more tools and 3/32 drill bits to start in on the top skins. Most of this stuff is being overly picky. My work is a good or better then the quick build kits, so it will look good when it's all painted. But.......


The other part I did not like was using the J-stringers. I used .063 angles on the last airplane and they make the skin lay down a little smoother and straighter than the stringers. It's more weight and shimming, but it looks good when it's all done.


I will use the heavier stringers on the top of the fuselage. For now, I have to start adding all of the parts to the back of the tail  section........It's amazing how many parts are still left to install.


One damn job after another....