Preparation

I placed my RV-14 Tail Kit order with Vans today, and filled in the required paperwork. The kit is in stock, so should be shipped within a week, and possibly here 2 weeks from now! Time to tidy up the garage and make room!

Finished the toolbox today. Unfortunately I made a few mistakes in the final steps. I felt I was rushing a little, and consequently placed the latch attachment off-center by about 1/8th. It closes and locks fine, given the amount of play in the latch, but it looks annoying. Then I slipped while drilling the holes for the handle securing straps. I didn’t center punch the holes, but that was a big mistake. I should have put a block under the lid and then punched the holes to ensure they ended up in the correct location.

Tonight I added the lid to the toolbox, and in the process made an annoying mistake. I cut the hinge to size before realizing that I needed to reverse the top part of the hinge to follow the directions precisely. The result was a choice between not being able to close the lid, and having a gap on one side of the hinge on the lid. I chose the latter, and riveted it in place.

Today I started on the Toolbox Practice Kit. The first steps are to prep (match drill, debur, dimple) and rivet the sides to the body of the box. I wasn’t able to squeeze every rivet, so I ended up bucking a few along the bottom edge. This is progressing much faster than the previous practice kit.

I finished the practice piece tonight! With everything ready to rivet, I got started by squeezing most of the rivets on the ribs on one skin. The last two rivets on the trailing edge of the rib are so tight I couldn’t squeeze then with the pneumatic squeezer. I got one with the hand squeezer, and for the last one I had to shape a thin bucking bar to get it done. Unfortunately I scratched the rib in the process, and the shop head was ugly. I got the second skin done following the same process, and added the trailing edge wedge before closing it up. Back riveting the trailing edge wedge was quite simple in the end, and it came out straight and clean. The last step was bending the leading edges of the skins and pop riveting them together. The first skin went well, with a nice uniform shape achieved. The second skin didn’t go quite as well, and I ended up with a bend that was less uniform. Once shaped, I wasn’t able change the radius of the bend, so I just went ahead and riveted it up to finish the project. Overall I was reasonably happy. I learned some lessons and figured out my tools, although I’d like to start again with a new practice kit and see how much better I could do next time. I would also like some practice priming with my spray gun before jumping into the airplane kit for real.

No pictures today, but I worked on counter sinking the trailing edge wedge. I had read about the issues others have had in getting this thin piece shaped correctly. I proceeded very slowly, and was reasonably happy with the result. I’m sure I have a single-fluted counter sink somewhere, which I would have used, but I could not find it tonight. On the trailing edge, I ended up with a knife edge between the two sides of the holes, but it didn’t look like any real enlargement of the hole had happened.

Today I riveted on the spar reinforcement plates and the ribs to the spar, and riveted the stiffeners to the skins, then riveted one of the skins to the spar. It was my first time using the rivet gun, having squeezed the other rivets. I inadvertently left the air hose at 90 PSI as I back-riveted my first couple of 3/32 rivet. The little things were completely mashed into the skin by the 3x gun, permanently deforming the skin. If this wasn’t a practice kit, I would have needed a new skin. It took a little trial and error before settling on 35 PSI for 3/32 rivets, and around 45 PSI for 1/8th rivets. My last row of stiffener rivets came out nicely.

Finished fitting the stiffeners to the skins tonight, including dimpling both the stiffeners and the skins. The DRDT-2 is so easy to use, and produces an excellent finish using my Cleveland Aircraft dimple dies. I found out later that I made a mistake in this step. I didn’t test fit the skins together with stiffeners and trailing edge wedge in place. If I had done, I would have found two of the stiffeners to be too long, overlapping with the trailing edge wedge. The stiffeners need to be trimmed, and on one skin they need to be trimmed more than is immediately apparent from the instructions and markings on the material.

I also fitted the spar doublers and ribs to the spar, match drilled everything, then disassembled and deburred all the parts.

With that done, I match drilled the skins to the ribs, and drilled the trailing edge wedge. Doing this without the recommended double-sided tape is a mistake. The tried taping the wedge in position with rivet tape, but it wasn’t strong enough and slipped a few times. At this point I disassembled and deburred everything, thinking I would next prime the parts and then assemble.

Started the next practice kit, building a section similar to an elevator. Used my bench grinder with Scotch Brite wheel to debur the stiffeners and remove some excess material. The wheel is great, and quickly eats away at these thin parts. Care is needed not to over-do it, but with some practice the finish is excellent.

Started working on the practice kits today. One of the first parts to build is an assembly of aluminum sheet and aluminum angle. Ended up with wavy rivet lines, but the rivets came out nicely. Used my pneumatic squeezer and played around with spacers and squeezer fittings, testing the shop heads to see how they conformed to the spec. All of these were within the tolerance allowed by the mil spec.