2004-09-30


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When I got home today, nobody was around, so what do you do if you are home alone? Shoot Rivets! Of Course.

I have choir practice tonight at 7:30 but I think that if I really try to move on this, I may be able to finish up the HS by tonight. The riveting actually goes along pretty fast now because I don't stop after every rivet and check to see if the shop heads look reasonable. I pretty much go by how long I squeeze the trigger on the gun. I still have the blue plastic on the inside of the aft portion of the skin so I don't have to worry too much about scratching the surface with the buck. 

Here I've flipped over the HS and have shot all of the rivets in the center, Liz came home and took the gun and I concentrated on bucking. We really got into a rhythm and made good progress. All that's left now is the ones that can be squeezed along the two flanges. Soooo.... (Irv, Tom and anyone else who's worried about it) I am REMOVING THE PLASTIC!
Liz wanted to try her hand at squeezing rivets. She got real good at it.
Now I installed the rear spar. I start by clecoing the spar to both HS-405's you may have to move the skin to get the holes to line up. before the cleco will go in.
Then install clecos in every 4th hole or so. This really strengthens it up a lot.
Now you can put rivets in every hole that ain't got a cleco.
Squeezing goes along real fast and all of the rivets come out exactly the same.
Once I had one side of HS-601PP rivets down, I replaced the HS-405 clecos with AN470AD4-7 rivets. the -7 rivet is a real manly rivet. 
I've found that some of the holes need to be cleaned out with the #30 drill before the AD4 rivet will fit.
I also put in the BSPQ-5-4 blind rivets into HS-708.
Then I flipped it over to do the other side. Kathryn came home and wanted to put in clecos.
OK, Kathryn. You can be my "Official" cleco installer!
The riveting went fast again and in no time WE WERE DONE WITH THE HORIZONTAL STABILIZER! Kathryn reminded me that she was also the "Official" plastic remover.
Yeeee-HAAAAA! This thing is BEAUTIFUL! And It's 7:15, Just in time to go to choir.
Back from choir, no time to waste, Just some sort of a debate on TV so, On to the Vertical Stabilizer.

First cleco the spar doubler (VS-808PP) to the spar (VS-803PP).

Then find VS-410, VS-411 and VS-412 hinge brackets and cleco them on.

The next Day

The Hammock Flew