The counterbalance pipe will be blind riveted to the inside of the nose skins with CS4-4 rivets, which have a countersunk head. The plans say that the skin will deform to fit the countersunk holes in the pipe, but I took a page from Mike Bullock's build log and used the male #30 dimple die and a hammer to dimple the skins (the countersunk hole in the pipe acts as the female dimple die).
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| This worked way better than I had anticipated. One tap was all it took! |
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| Perfect. |
I moved on and riveted the nose ribs to the counterbalance pipe for the right aileron. The plans suggest bending the small tabs on the ribs out of the way to allow room for the rivet puller, so I used the hand seamer to accomplish this. Once the rivets were set, the rib was easy to bend back into place.
I quickly realized that I had gotten a little ahead of myself since I hadn't yet dimpled the ribs. That was an easy fix though since every hole that needed it was still reachable with the squeezer. I took the reminder and dimpled the rest of the ribs and spars while I had the chance.
Next up is getting the doubler plates attached to the spars. The round headed rivets were pretty straightforward, but the plans don't give any specific guidance on what to do for the flush rivets that will attach the platenuts to the back side of the spar. I briefly considered dimpling the plates and the spar underneath, but that would mean dimpling the platenuts too which I wanted to avoid if at all possible. I decided to countersink the doubler plates to allow the rivets to sit flush without having to dimple anything underneath them. The plates are the exact thickness of the rivet heads, meaning they're just thick enough to allow this without negatively affecting the strength of the plate.
At first I tried using the -4 length rivets called out in the plans to attach the platenuts, but the resulting shop head for the first one I squeezed was too thin for my liking. I switched to -4.5 rivets for the remainder and got much better results. As a rule, I should probably at least consider using a slightly longer rivet for any platenuts in the future since I've come across this issue so many times.
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| -4 on the left, -4.5 on the right. The rivets will be backed up in strength by the torqued bolt that will go into the platenut, so I'm not going to bother drilling out the -4 rivet. |
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| The results look good to me. |
With the doubler plates attached I could cleco on the nose skin and rivet the nose ribs to the spar. I did this without clamping anything down at first, resulting in a crooked first rivet. I quickly drilled it out and rectified the issue before proceeding further.
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| No bueno. Try again! |
Once I had done this correctly for both ailerons I called it a night.
