Last Sunday (3/21) was cold and windy but Mark was able to prime all of the pieces for the spar in the garage. Around 3 in the afternoon, Mark needed my help to squeeze the rivets that form the box spar. It took me placing most of my body weight on the rivet squeeze tool to get the rivets to the proper size. Mark went back after dinner and inserted the counterbalance arm in the counterbalance brackets. Although drilling through steel after having worked with so much aluminum was difficult it all went smoothly with no problems.
Monday and Tuesday were devoted to working on the forward and aft spars. Mark worked on final drilling of the holes for the nutplates and doublers one night giving him the opportunity to install all of the nutplates the next. Since these squeeze rivets were much smaller than those needed for the box, Mark did not need my newly found rivet squeezing prowess.
The plan on Thursday was to rivet the box structure together; however, after having a "crazy busy" day at school the first rivet that Mark pulled turned out to be the WRONG type. URGH!!! Quickly realizing that more harm than good would come from working when he was tired and frustrated; Mark put everything away for the evening and came inside.
It turned out that Friday was no different than Thursday at work; but Mark wanted to at least take care of the mistake from the previous night, so he spent a few minutes to neatly drill out the rivet.
Ahhhhhhh. . . Saturday. . . .After a good night's sleep and knowing it was going to be a beautiful day, Mark was anxious to get back to it. Of course he began by riveting the spars together before getting to work on the ribs. Mark's dad came over to help. (I couldn't be around because my Science Team was competing in the district academic meet. We won!!! On to the regional competition.)
Together they were a rib prepping factory. Each rib needed to be radiused and all edges and holes had to then be deburred. Once this was done, the surface of the ribs needed to be scuffed to prep for priming. Dad was a tremendous help and turned out to be a pro on the Scotch Brite wheel. When he left, Mark washed all the parts down in soapy water before a final clean with MEK and priming.
Additionally, Dad had a great suggestion for making the hinge stop bushings square using a piece of wood with a hole drilled in it. The bushing fits snugly when you push it into the wood until it is just barely proud. One the bushing is placed in this way, you then file it square.
Although we're having a beautiful Sunday, Mark has to spend much of it devoted to his neglected graduate school work. As I've mentioned before, the plane is so much more fun than all those other obligations. On a positive note we have Thursday and Friday off, so hopefully he'll get to spend lots of time with N624RV.
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