Friday, April 19, 2019

Tail Cone Riveting Part #5

Got started today with riveting the bottom of the tail cone.
My uncle Al helped me with this.  He was outside driving while I was inside bucking.


Fairly straight forward riveting.  The aft most bulkheads required some weird positions and sometimes the rivets are hidden behind stiffeners which requires some bucking bar gymnastics.


My uncle has arthritis so we got my youngest daughter out there to help us put rivets in the holes after she got home from school.   This sped things up drastically!




All done!

I then riveted the aft side of the battery/bellcrank ribs to the bulkhead.  This is where I deviated from the plans and used the RV14 Yaw Damper mount which had to be modified.  I chose to use a nutplate here to make the damper mount removable and here it is all riveted to the assembly.



Tuesday, April 16, 2019

Tail Cone Riveting Part #4

 Riveted the next bulkhead fwd on the pilot side.

 Then the next one...

Then the next one...


Then the last one..

Then I went back and riveted as many of the lower stiffeners as I could with my short arms.


Then started on the front end back.

Then I did the same on the other side.

Working my way down the line.

And more...

Eventually I ended up getting this whole side done!


So I went back and finished the ones I left on the other side.  Have no idea why I was able to get them the second time but not the first.

So I flipped the tail cone over and will be riveting the bottom with assistance next.....