Tonight I finished the rudder pedals, final-sizing the holes and riveting the parts together. I was able to squeeze all of the rivets, so assembly was easy. It’s recommended to put the shop head of a rivet on the side with the thickest material, but I didn’t like the idea of having the shop heads visible on the pedals, so I deviated from that.
Having separated the parts previously, tonight I etched and primed the rudder pedals. This was a good chance to experiment with some changes to my painting setup.
Previously I had no regulator on the air from the compressor to gun, and was using hi-flow couplers. With this setup, I was setting pressure on the tank at around 100 PSI. First I added a regulator to the gun, allowing me to see what actual pressure was passing through the gun with the trigger pulled. It was around 30 PSI, higher than the recommended 24. It was possibly even higher since the regulator is likely interfering with air pressure and flow even with the control backed out completely. With the regulator in line, I was able to set air pressure on the tank to 50 PSI, and adjust the regulator to allow 24 PSI with the trigger pulled.
With the changes made, I primed the rudder pedals. The result was an improvement, but there is still some orange peel effect showing up. It’s good enough for the rudder pedals, since no one will be looking that closely. I will try to tune the pressure and paint volume again to see if I can get a better result before I start painting the cockpit.
Tonight I cleaned the cockpit with rubbing alcohol, and rotated the fuselage upside down in preparation for paint.
I have some new paint that arrived, smoke grey color, which will be used to coat the cockpit. I want to tune up my paint system before I start on the cockpit, so I will start by painting the rudder peddles.
Tonight I finished masking up the cockpit in preparation for painting. I used dowels in the nutplates to hopefully prevent any paint from fouling up the threads.
The area will need a final clean up with alcohol before I can start spraying.
Today at lunchtime I quickly finished setting the final rivets in the baggage area, completing the chapter. Next I will be painting the cockpit, and then installing the brakes and rudder pedals.
Yesterday I was able to install the flap motor channel and flap motor brackets, and today I installed the baggage compartment side walls. Actually, I didn’t quite finish; there are some rivets I will need to buck tomorrow to wrap up. It is too late in the evening to start riveting.
The pop riveting is so fast, it’s really amazing how quickly and easily it all comes together. I wouldn’t attempt this without a pneumatic squeezer though, it would be painful to manually set these hundreds of rivets. I made extensive use of the “wedge tool”. I found it very useful to have a piece of tape on the little wedge so I could tape it into the correct orientation before setting the rivet.
Today I finished the baggage floor, and installed the splice. Then I installed nutplates on the flap motor bracket, which is now ready to install. Everything went well, except the final rivets between the floors and the side ribs. These holes were not well aligned, and I needed to ream them somewhat to get rivets into the holes.
Today I finished the pop rivets on the baggage floors. The remaining rivets, those between the floor and the rear bulkhead, need to be set with a rivet gun. It’s too late in the evening to be pounding rivets, so I moved onto the next step, and installed the seat back hinges.
More progress on the baggage floor riveting tonight. I worked mostly on the right side floor, getting it almost to the same point as the left side. This has been a relatively easy riveting job so far, although I’m saving the harder rivets until the end. Hopefully I can wrap up this step over the next couple of days.
Tonight I started riveting the baggage floor. I started on the left side of the fuselage, and set all of the pull rivets, except for those oblong the outside edge. For the edge, I think it will be easier to roll the fuselage onto the other side, so that gravity helps keep the squeezer correctly oriented.
It’s so easy doing pop rivets with the pneumatic squeezer, and I was able to cover a lot of ground in just an hour or so. It’s also quiet, and I was able to work on this late at night without keeping anyone awake.
