Poor man's rivet cutter....                    

Since Spruce sent the wrong length rivets twice, I decided to shorten the AN470AD-5-10s to -5s, which I could then use to finally fix my screw up with the oversized holes. To cut the rivets, I drilled the correct diameter hole in some scrap aluminum, in this case  with a #21 bit, to hold the rivet securely, shimmed with washers to get the desired length protruding from the hole, then used a hack saw to make a square cut in the rivet. I used the ScotchBrite wheel to smooth the cut, then finished riveting the rib to the doubler and spar. Amazing how much time I wasted on this.

 At least I can finally move forward with the rudder spar.  The picture at right shows the two oversize rivets in the center.  I suppose a little extra strength can't hurt.  As much as I like my Main Squeeze from Cleveland Tool, I had to revert to my 30-year-old squeezer to do some of these.  The body of the old squeezer is thinner and will fit into some spaces that otherwise can't be reached.  I'll be glad when I get  back to the pulled rivets.  Haven't had to drill one of those out yet. 

Then to add to my pressure, the fuselage kit showed up today.  Same deal as before, the driver of the 18-wheeler said "How you gonna get this box off the truck, boy?."  Once again the driver told me I should have told the shipping company that the delivery was to a residence and that there was no loading dock and no one there to help unload.  The box is about 9'x5'x1' and weghs about 440 lbf.  Fortunately, exactly as before, he said that, just this once, he'd help me get it off the truck and over to my garage, although I should have been charged an extra $100.  Quite a nice fellow.  I offered him a $20 tip, which he refused.

Back to the aforementioned pressure.  I have six days to get my antique Corvette through its final inspection, or it will be what the Germans call ein Klöster Föken.  Antique cars, at least in North Carolina, have to have one special inspection, by a designated officer, then never again.  Hallelujah!  But that's another story.  Additional pressure comes from the Spousal Unit (my brainy, hard-working and beautiful wife, Karen) who has an offer of a full-time job contingent upon her defending her Ph.D dissertation in August.  This is causing a pronounced lack of sleep for both of us.

My main squeeze.......                               

...from Cleveland Aircraft Tool.  I didn't buy this tool in the beginning, mainly because it's three times as expensive as the competition, I already had a squeezer, and another squeezer came as part if the RV-12 tool kit from Isham (the beautiful but ill-fated Tatco).  Had I only known what I know now, I would have been spared a lot of grief.  The narrow one-inch nose arbor fit right into the space where I couldn't previously squeeze the forgoten rivets, allowing me to correct that error and finish installing the vertical stab forward skin (OK, quit with the jokes, Beavis).  Not sure why the forward skin needed to be installed at this point, since it'll have to come back off to install the vertical stab on the tail cone.

Another issue arose with buying rivets from Aircraft Spruce.  I ordered the AN470AD-5-5 rivets to install in the oversized holes in the rudder spar, only to be sent -5-10 rivets, twice the needed length.  Anyone can make a mistake, I figured, so I re-ordered.  Same result.  I suppose they have a large bin of rivets which are mis-labeled.  I'll call on Monday and send'em back.  It's kind of disturbing, though, for this to happen with probably the best known aircraft supply store in the business.  If the rivets had been only 1/16th inch too long, I probably would have used them without checking.  I do always check the marks on the head to be sure the material is correct, but not the length.

Dead in the water......                                                

Isham agreed to credit me for the defective Tatco squeezer, and I pulled the trigger on a Main Squeeze from Cleveland Tool ($$$).  I got a 3-inch arbor and the 1-inch narrow-nose arbor which should solve the earlier issue with the missed rivet in a tight place.  Meanwhile, I'm waiting on the oversize rivets for the hogged-out holes (see earlier post) and the #21 bit for said rivets.  So, unable to progress through the build manual, I'm reduced to de-burring parts -- a small sample of which is shown at right.  With over 12000 rivets, each one of which goes through at least two holes, that's a lot of holes to de-burr.  Also, all edges on the alclad parts must be de-burred.  Sometimes it seems like I'll spend half the total build time de-burring parts.  Reading other blogs, it seems that other builders use the ScotchBrite wheel more than I do for de-burring edges of the alclad.  When I do this, it scuffs the alclad on both surfaces about a half inch back from the edges, meaning that scuffed area must be primed.  Using a small file (seen to the right of the large file in the picture), I can leave the alclad pristine.  Maybe I'm wasting time.

(page 7-02) Finally, a mistake that's not my fault.......

The rudder spar seemed to be coming along nicely. I did all the match drilling, deburring, and primed the mating surfaces. When it came time to rivet the spar caps to the spar and ribs, each rivet that I squeezed resulted in a shop head that was at a pronounced angle to the surface of the spar web. Naturally, I blamed myself, figuring I'd somehow squeezed without having everything aligned. Each rivet I squeezed had to be drilled out (my 487th favorite thing), eventually resulting in an oversized hole.    I finally did a few test rivets using the fancy new Tatco squeezer I had been using (which came with the RV-12 tool kit I bought from Isham) and compared these with test rivets using my 20-year-old squeezer (which looks like a toy compared to the Tatco). Surprise!  The rivets from the old squeezer were perfect, while the rivets from the Tatco had the slanted shop head.  Upon looking closely at the Tatco, I could clearly see that the surfaces of the jaws were not parallel.  I'm hoping Isham will exchange it.  I'll have to go up one rivet size for the holes that became hogged out due repeatedly having to be drilled out.

At this point, I could permanately bolt the upper rudder hinge to the vertical stab spar.  Van's instruction manual calls for  20 to 25 inch-lbf torque for AN-3 bolts, which, to my calibrated elbow, seems like too little.  The bolts go into nut plates which are riveted to spar caps on the other side (not visible) of the v-stab spar.  After a bit or research and pondering, I measured the torque required to turn the bolt in the threaded portion of the nut plate, and found that it takes approximately 10 ft-lbf just to overcome the squeeze produced by the out-of-round shape before the bolt bottoms against the washers.  I added the thread drag to the lower end of the spec, and tighten to 30 inch-lbf.  I may increase it to 35.