Ok, so I’ve been anxious about starting the next step for the fuel tank but finally decided the time is now. It’s time to start to apply proseal and rivet the tank!
Well, let’s back up just a little bit and talk about the prep. Standard stuff, deburr all the parts, and get them appropriately dimpled. I went with the Cleaveland Tank skin dies for the skins, and the sub-structure dimple dies for all the stiffeners and such. I also did all the necessary countersinks and hopefully made the right call to countersink the tank attach bracket that wasn’t specifically called out. Guess the expectation is that the builder needs to start figuring our more stuff on their own.
The other thing I was researching and deciding upon was how I was going to apply the proseal and what system to rivet the parts. Specifically I decided to buy a few of the 3.5 oz tubes of proseal and to use the pneumatic dispenser to hopefully keep the mess to a minmum. I also decided to follow the suggestion here on how to complete the assembly. Basically I will apply a layer of proseal and then cleco the parts together. I then shape and clean up the edges of the part and allow the proseal to set-up. I then come back and remove the clecos one by one and wet-rivet the parts together to complete the process.
The down-side to this process with the pre-measured tubes is that this can be wasteful. I was able to do all the attachments to the ribs, the stiffeners, and the fuel tank cap with 1 tube. Then I riveted all the parts on the ribs and riveted all the parts on the top of the skins and ended up wasting about half a tube. (Mostly as I ran out of time and had to call it a night). I have the Qt container of proseal on order and plan on mixing up some smaller batches when I need to rivet.
Also not sure how visible it is in the time lapse, but I didn’t do this with the fuel gauge nutplates. Ugh, I can start to see why this recommended method is so much nicer.
Below are some photos, as well as a time lapse.
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