Scott & Tanya Card RV9A build log (N4822C)

Here we are with a long weekend of nothing to do but build! I am putting in a lot of hours in the hope of having the wings mostly done by the time my fuselage gets here in about six weeks. I have completed a number of tasks in the past few days.

First off, I finished riveting both outboard leading edge assemblies together. I shot most of those rivets by myself. It was good practice for me and an effort to conserve my bucking partners help (she has been bucking all of the tank rivets). I also finished riveting on the plate nuts at the leading edge/tank joint strips. With the outboard leading edges assembled, I began installation of the landing lights. I finished cutting the holes in both wings. It is difficult to stomach cutting a big hole in the beautiful (ok, it might have a smily or two) new wings. The process that I used for cutting the holes was something like this: First, I used a 3″ cutoff wheel on the die grinder and cut to very rough shape. Then I put a carbide burr (rotary file) in the die grinder and went to town to get things much closer. After that, I used files, sandpaper, and scotchbrite to finalize the holes. Both holes took about an hour an a half. The landing light assembly installation is still in process. Note that I’m doing this stuff with the leading edges still off of the spars.

Tank assembly has continued. I sealed up the inboard and outboard ribs on one tank after installing the vent tube (fabricated during pre-assembly). I also riveted on the tank attach bracket and installed the vent bulkhead fitting, all with proseal. Across another couple of tank rib sealing sessions, we finished sealing all interior ribs in the second tank too. The big difference being that the end rib rivets can be squeezed instead of driven. By this time, Tanya and I have this tank rib sealing and riveting thing down pat, now that we are done with interior ribs. Oh well, we’ll surely have an opportunity to use all that we have learned on the next plane. One useful tip to reduce the number of clecos that have to be cleaned of proseal (very time consuming), is to use only one set of clecos for each rib sealing session. Like this: Remove one rib, apply proseal, cleco it back in, rivet, carefully setting the dirty clecos aside as you go, remove the next rib, apply proseal, cleco it back in with the already dirty clecos from the previous rib, etc… This yields only one rib worth of clecos to clean as opposed to two or three times as many. This is a life saver as it seems to take almost as long to clean the proseal off of the clecos as it does to seal and rivet the ribs.

Finally I put in a bunch of time finishing deburring all of the main wing structures, dimpling all main ribs and rear spars, machine countersunk all rivet holes in the main spar flanges, and alodining those spar holes. Wow, talk about getting a lot accomplished. Each one of these operations took at least a couple of hours. The instructions say to ream out the dimples in the rear spars to make the skin dimples sit a little better. I decided to use the tank dimple dies which produce a dimple a few thousandths deeper than a normal dimple instead of reaming them all. I tested it with a scrap first and liked the results. To alodine the machine countersunk holes in the spar, I put a tiny bit of alodine in a small dixie cup and dipped a cotton swab. I then twirled the cotton swab in each hole and let is sit for a few minutes (as I moved on down the spar). I then went back with a small water soaked rag and dabbed (squished) both sides of each hole in order to rinse it with water. Periodically I rinsed the rag in a bucket of clean water. This produced great results. And don’t forget the gloves when playing with alodine.

 

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

 

Tanya and I sealed three more tank ribs last night after work. Guess what, Tanya says she doesn’t like building tanks. Imagine that! Oh, well, she has been doing a fantastic job bucking the rivets. Three ribs in a single session is certainly the absolute max for us. This completes the interior ribs of one tank. I can squeeze the rivets on the two end ribs solo.

Ah, the joys of proseal. My first pass with the grey goo was a mess. The first task was to seal the tank stiffeners. I ended up spreading the proseal onto the stiffener with a tong depressor. That wasn’t so bad, but trying to form a fillet around the edges of the stiffeners in this was almost impossible. After I was done with this I regained my composure and hatched a different plan for the next round.

Next up was to do the stiffeners on the other tank. This time I carefully scooped up the mixed proseal (about 30 grams) with a tong depressor and loaded it into the open end of a syringe (30ml with the tip drilled out to about 1/8″) with the plunger removed. I had previously tried sucking it up through the tip but that was never going to work for me. Loading a syringe is the only way to go. It made things so much easier in both preparation and application. This time, I just squeezed the right amount of goo onto the stiffeners, spread it with the tong depressor and riveted it on. The edge fillets were also a snap to do. It couldn’t be any easier than dispensing from the tip of a syringe. I also learned, through trial and the advise of a fellow builder, it is best to remove any booger from the tip of an inserted rivet before trying to drive it as a bucking bar will slip and slide on the proseal (not good). I cut up some paper towels into little squares to use as quick wipes dipped in MEK for every little spot of stray proseal. This keeps things from getting out of control. I go through a full stack of these little squares each session.

Next, I was ready to start sealing tank ribs. Tanya and I completed two ribs in a little under two hours (there are 14 ribs). Once again, the syringe method is the only way to go. They were much easier to cleco in after being dimpled and prosealed.

In between all of this stuff, I spent a bunch of time deburring holes on the main wing ribs in prep for dimpling. All main skins are now off for a while. I’m jumping around doing little stuff, deburring and dimpling, in between when Tanya can help proseal tank ribs. It really does go a lot easier with two people.

 

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

 

Today (Friday) I took what a fellow builder has termed an “illegal build day”, meaning instead of going to work, I spent a full day in the garage. I do that periodically. Hey, I don’t take real vacations and my company likes for me to “decompress” every once in a while.

Yesterday, I dimpled ALL of the leading edge skins (two tanks and two outboard leading edge skins) in just a few hours after work (ok, more like 4-5hrs). This is the first time that I have had a chance to use the dimpling tool that I got before I started the wings. It is so much better than whacking the C-frame dimpler a million times. It was amazing how fast and easy dimpling a whole wing skin could be.

Earlier in the week, I finished edge deburring the tank skins and scuffing the insides where the prosealed ribs will go. My standard edge deburring method is to first use a vixen file square with the edge. I do this until no shear marks are left. Then I go back down the edge on each side with the file 45degrees to the edge to take off the sharp burr. After that, I use a 90 degree die grinder with a 1″ scotchbrite wheel that has already been used many times for edge deburring such that it has a number of grooves in it. When I go down the length of the edge with the small wheel, the groove in it finalizes an almost perfectly smooth radius on the edge.

I tried a number of things to scuff the tank skins for the proseal (scotchbrite pad, 200 grit sandpaper, blue aluminum oxide wheel from home depot). The last thing that I tried that worked the best was a 2″ scotchbrite rolo disk on 90 degree die grinder. This is what I generally use to buff out scratches with a finer disk. Note that I scuffed the tank skins before I dimpled them. It would have been a real mistake to dimple then scuff as the action of getting a good course scuff would have damaged the dimples. I’m also using special tank dimple dies here that are a little deeper to accommodate the proseal.

Today I scrubbed all of the ribs (LE and tank), tank stiffeners, and tank skins with soap and water. While that stuff was drying, I bounced around and did a few other things. I got all of the tops of the wing spars machine countersunk for the skin dimples and deburred one side of the main ribs on both wings. I’m still liking building both wings at the same time. This evening I prepared both tank skins for back riveting the stiffeners and fuel filler flange tomorrow. While I was doing this, Tanya acid etched the LE ribs in preparation for alodining tomorrow and priming on Sunday.

So, as this weekend of building starts, I’m hoping by Monday we’ll be ready to start riveting the outboard leading edge ribs to the skins (once that is done, I’ll do landing light installations) and have at least a few tank ribs prosealed and riveted in place. This would put us on track to be about ready to close up both tanks by next weekend. We’ll see.

 

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

 

I got the order confirmation and ship date on my fuselage kit from Vans today in the mail. It is scheduled to ship the week of July 4, 2005. Now it is time to get going on the wings (currently working on tanks). This is a little sooner than I expected, but I’m not complaining.