Set-To-Cure
Back-riveting
Back riveting is essentially the best thing ever. Well, slightly worse than I thought because I don't have a back riveting plate, so I was awkwardly shuffling my bucking bar around. But it's a happy medium between the precision of the squeezer and the speed of the rivet gun. Put a strip of painters tape down and I can knock out an entire line of rivets in a minute or so. Not as precise as a squeezer of course but much easier to get good rivets than using a rivet gun.
R-1004
On the other hand, riveting the bottom rib in was a pain. The last three rivets are in a space too small for my bucking bar to fit. A back riveting plate would be perfect, but I still don't have one. I saw some people online fashion their own bucking bars out of metal, so I set out on a journey to jury rig something up. I didn't want to wait to buy a dedicated thin bucking bar online, because I wanted to get this all done and have the trailing edge curing before the weekend, since it nicely coincides with a trip out of town I have scheduled.
Therefore, I scoured the garage for anything remotely metal. My first choice: This piece of metal from the kit!
Not nearly hard enough, so my next bright idea was to use a cutoff disc.
Surprisingly, it did not work. Here's the innocent cutoff disc that I was prepared to sacrifice.
Ultimately, I grabbed a chisel, that still wasn't as hard as I wanted it to be but it sort of did the job.
All in all, should've used pop rivets.
Oh well, onwards to proseal!
Time and Cost
Money spent so far:
| Category | Budget | Spent |
|---|---|---|
| Tools | 3800 | 4000 |
| Shipping | 300 | 524 |
| Empennage | 4310 | 4310 |
Time spent so far:
| Task | Time |
|---|---|
| Shop | 36 |
| Vertical Stabilizer* | 36 |
| Rudder | 25 |
| Totals: | 97 |
*Finished