David's RV-10 Build

Today started off great. I had parts primered, ready to rivet. First step was to attached the Rudder stops to the top of the bottom Rudder attach bracket. This came out great.

Next I reattached the rear spar caps, rear spar double, to the rear spar with clecos. After that I began riveting per what the drawing showed. Everything was looking great till I had to do the inside holes of the top rudder attach bracket. Not really sure what I was thinking, but it wasn’t anything smart. I ended up squeezing the rivet with my squeezer upside down and collapsed the rear spar. It wasn’t pretty and no amount of trying to straighten it out was helping. So I ended up ordering another one and I expect it to be here tomorrow. I had a blast drilling out all the rivets. The pictures of don’t really give it justice. In the mean time I finished up what steps I could. Which really wasn’t much. I got the interior of the skeleton riveted together which was about a grand total of about 15 rivets. I also mounted the skeleton inside the skin so I can really get a look and generate a game plan on how to rivet the skin on. I am not looking forward to that yet.

Today I got my acid etch and prime time. The acid etch is POR-15 Metal Ready, This was recommended from my paint supplier. I’ve never heard of it before but I’ll give it shot. I elected to use SEM EZCoat for my primer. I am skipping the alodine step. It seems to be either too expensive to get here, or too much of a hassle. I also picked up some underbed totes from Walmart for dipping tanks. Turns out one is cracked and I noticed it after I dumped the POR15MR in to it. After some creativity I managed to salvaged about 95% of it. I didn’t take any pictures of the process, but I did take pictures of the final layouts. I’ll let these sit for a day to firm up the primer and then begin riveting

Today started off with removing half of the clecos I had holding the skin on. After what seemed liked forever, I got to start drilling. Once done with that, move the clecos over 1 hole, drill again. Jason one of my employees told me, this plane doesn’t ever get finished, you just keep moving clecos. It sure feels like that. Once I got done match drilling, Jason & I marked off each hole that is not to be dimpled. Next after disassembling the entire I structured, I began the process of scotchbriting everything. Once done with that, I used my new Cleveland Aircraft Tools Sub-Structure dies and dimpled the substructure as required. Are these necessary, I don’t know, but they worked just fine. I also noticed that on the skin I have a slight bulge where the middle rib was. It doesn’t appear to be too bad.

Today I continued with the skeleton of the vertical stabilizer. After deburring the edges I removed all the blue plastic. There is a lot of it and it sucks. Putting together the structure was pretty easy. It was followed up by match drilling all the holes that were currently clecoed  together. 

After building the skeleton we had to take a bunch of clecos out to fit the skin. This was a great step in the process as it really felt like I was building an airplane and not playing with metal. The hardest part here was lining up the center rib. It just felt like it wanted to fight me the entire time. I am glad I had my dad there to help out on this one.

Tomorrow I will have the joy of removing a bunch of clecos and match drilling the skin

It dawned on me today that the only reason I haven’t started my kit was because I didn’t have my dimpler. I didn’t want to start without finishing my practice kit, but the only thing I really want to practice on is riveting. So today I started doing all the machine work for the vertical stabilizer. I did a real poor job of taking pictures on this. The first task is to cut the spar caps. Not really much here, just cut a section out of the long side. Next after clamping both spar caps inside the rear spar was to match drill the holes from the rear spar into the spar caps. Next was the addition of the rear spar doubler and the hinge brackets. This required taking all the clecos off, placing the required pieces, and putting all the clecos back on. After all the holes were match drilled, I had to take the rear spar doubler off again for counter sinking. Thinking back on this, I could of probably got away with it still cleco’d to the rest of the parts. This is probably the most interesting part of the day. I had never used a microstop counter sink tool before, so I had to make sure it was set properly. My first counter sink is a little deep, but I’m not worried about it. After using this, I wish I had it back when I was a machinist.