David's RV-10 Build

Today I started off by riveting the nose ribs. Corey gave me a hand with the center section ribs. Once we got that done we placed the front spar and began to rivet it. I could have done this solo, but having a helper makes this so much easier. At one point Dad & Jason showed up and they also helped out in riveting the skin to the front spar. After getting all the rivets in the spar I began riveting the rest of the ribs in place on the spar wit LP4 rivets. I also secured the end rivets with some AN470-4-? rivets. After that I just cleco’d everything in place so it will be lined up for tomorrow.

Corey (L) and Me (R)

Today I went to work on priming everything. This was done in 2 sessions as I broke it up for dinner.

Next I began riveting the stiffners together and the to the stringer web. My squeezer did not fit so I had to use the rivet gun. I can definitely tell I still have a bunch of work on my rivet gun skills. After that I mounted the assembly to the front spar.

After I riveted everything to the spar I mounted the cradles I made and set the skins in them. I cleco’d the nose ribs in and called it a night. I will have help available tomorrow to help me rivet the skins

Today I finished dimpling the skins and the ribs. After that I followed it up with countersinking the spars and the stiffeners. I got bored at one point in time so I counted the holes. 952. 952 holes. 952 clecos in and out, 952 holes to drill, debur, dimple or counter sink. Good times. Tomorrow as long as nothing comes up, I will be priming and maybe start some riveting.

Today I sanded all the parts that I had available. The ability to use my palm sander made it a million times faster. I also ordered a bunch of red scotch brite pads from amazon as well. That is the only down side of the palm sander is it tears the pads up pretty quickly. After sanding I dimpled one of the skins for the horizontal stabilizer. I can’t stress about how there is a lot of holes in this thing. One step at a time though. No pictures tonight.

Today I finished the other half of the Horizontal Stabilizer. Once that was completed I disassembled everything. It’s so amazing how compact this part is when its disassembled. After dreading scotch briting the entire surface, I discovered that my palm sander will hold a scotch brite pad pretty well. This led to the next problem, Electricity. This would be far easier if I had a drop cord.

Today I matched drilled one side of the horizontal stabilizer. I don’t think a sane person can do both sides in one sitting. To keep track of which holes I drilled, each one got a little black stripe from a sharpie

Today Corey helped me begin clecoing the everything to the skins. I have 800 3/32nd clecos and we used every single one of them. We called it a day after that.

Today I primered & assembled the Front HS Spar. I did learn a valuable lesson here that I will probably forget. But its basically, If there is another tool, its probably the right tool. The adjustable set holder for the rivet squeezer is pretty much at its max for a -9 rivet. But I got into my rhythm I forgot I had my rivet gun that I could use. Had I used this, I think this would of gone far easier on the -9 and -10 rivets.

Nezr I added the various ribs to the spar and matched drilled as neccessary

Me cleco’ing

Nice pretty rivets, I bet you can’t tell without looking at my other post which holes I fixed

After letting the ol JB Weld cure for several days, I ground down the excess and it came out really well. I forgot to take a post drill/countersink photo  but its not bad at all. I didn’t have any other time today to work on the plane

On Friday I called Van’s and spoke with tech support. After describing the issue, I was advised that a -4 rivet could be put in place instead. When I asked about the -4 still being too deep, We reviewed the plan’s again and determined that since all it was holding was the stiffner, Which is riveted closely on both sides, as well as the vertical portion. I could “patch” the hole with JB Weld and redrill it. This is NOT recommend for key places. I apparently got really lucky and it would not be an issue.

I took some tape and created a seal so the JB Weld would not drop through and be smooth. I also filled in a 2nd rivet that was just a LITTLE deep, not bad at all. I smoothed it out as best I could, the rest will need to be sanded down a bit.

While waiting for this to dry I went on to the next set of parts that I could work on. The plans have you modify 4 HS-1004 ribs. This was pretty easy. Just cut some minor sections out as well as bending 2 of them. Next I grabbed the HS-905 ribs and began deburring them. This is the first section of the plans that really confused me. The parts they send you do not look like the parts in the plans. Van’s has apparently added lightening holes to each of the nose ribs and you no longer need to cut the oval as described in the plans. After painfully removing the blue plastic from everything, I deburred the edges of all the ribs that I had worked on so far.

Next I fabricated 4 cradle stands and wrapped them in black vinyl electrical tape to protect the skins. Finally I skipped ahead of the plans and cleco’d the nose ribs in. Looks like I will be taking these out when it is time to work on the spar again.