Category: RV10

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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So not a lot I can say about dimpling other than there is a lot of it on the tailcone.  Doing this solo was slightly challenging as I tried a few different ways to get access to all of the holes.

In the grand scheme of things, this was pretty straightforward. (I did use the substructure dimples on the bulkheads and ribs but not where the sinks overlapped.)  Take your time and don’t make an oops like I did.  Seems that only once did my attention wander and I ended up making a new hole in my skin.   Somewhat crushing, but not the end of the world.  I was able to drill the holes out to fit a 5- Rivet and ordered some assorted 426 flush head rivets.  My Rivet gun should be able to set it just fine, and I’m having a technical counselor come over to take a look at all my potential mistakes.  I’ll share the completed image of my “fix” in a future update. Read more

Now it’s time to take everything apart and start to get ready for primer and final assembly.  Oh how fun.  Honestly it’s amazing how long it takes to put everything together and how quickly you can pull it apart.   Anyway, I pull the top skins off and get the rear shoulder harness anchors cleaned up and drilled into the longerons.  I do a little bit of cleanup in the garage, then start disassembling all the parts by the aft deck (marking parts as I go).  I keep the plans open so I can make sure I write the correct part number on everything.  On a few parts, I make some orientation marks to ensure I put it back the way it was initially assembled.   Read more

Starting off on page 10-10 and installing the Aft deck on the tailcone.  Initially I was having some issues trying to get the skins to line up correctly with the aft deck, and realized this was a self-inflicted issue.  I initially cut F-1010B a bit long due to my previous issues with the J-stiffeners being too short.  Even so it appeared that with the F-1010B being long it wasn’t an issue (see photo below)

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