Category: Tailcone

This weekend I was able to get a friend of mine (Dan) to come over so I could rivet the aft top skin on the tailcone.  As he was doing me a favor, I was crawled into the tailcone with my backrivet set and gave him a backrivet bar to hold on the skin.  This was the first time I tried this method of backriveting, and honestly it worked really well!  Dan figured out the process really quick and was awesome in helping me get this beast riveted up.  I will say that being inside the tailcone and riveting overhead was hard on the arms, but not impossible.

I think there was a VAF post regarding how to protect the ribs when crawling into the tailcone, and honestly I thought I would put a piece of plywood or a 2×6 across all the ribs as a platform for me to sit on.  This was somewhat thwarted by where my stock lumber was and all the “stuff” in the garage at the moment.  I’m sure that would have worked (mostly), but that seemed like a lot of effort for a temporary platform.  Read more

With the tailcone skin completed (as well as my Tech Counselor visit), I am ready to button things up and attach the rear deck and the top skins.  I start by jumping in with my rivet gun and bucking bar, but for whatever reason, I’m not having the best of luck getting the rivets set well.  Honestly I started drilling out almost ever other rivet (sometimes a few times for the same rivet!).

Decide to switch to the Squeezer and start getting better results.  Not sure if I was just being sloppy, having issues with my rivet set, or something to do with the settings on my rivet gun.

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September has been a VERY busy month and I haven’t had as much time to work on the airplane as I had hoped.  Some of this was due to the fact that I finally got to a point where I needed a second person to help rivet a few areas.  Just about every weekend in September was booked with family, or personal events so didn’t really have a lot of time to spend in the garage. (See previous post about the B-17)

One thing that stood out in the timelapse was how many times I drilled out rivets that I wasn’t happy with.  Honestly, drilling out rivets is no big deal and something that doesn’t get me nervous anymore.  I’m sure I didn’t need to drill them all out, but if I was at all questioning a rivet I just drilled it out and replaced it.

Basically got as much solo riveting done as I could before I got one of my old College buddies to come over to help out.  At least now I can say I had an Aerospace Engineer help build my plane!   Even had to enlist my wife to help me out for some of the last rivets.  She was a good sport, but doesn’t really find it enjoyable.

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Into the fray we go.  Time to start final assembly and riveting the tailcone together.  I know there are all kinds of opinions on the “right” way to rivet, but I elected to backrivet the tailcone where I could.  This was pretty easy honestly and just required me to cut a slot in my carpet to allow me to mount my back-rivet plate on my benchtop.  Only hazard is making sure you don’t try to backrivet off the end of the plate!  With that in mind I did take things slowly.

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