I had to go pick up my order from Plane Tools at the UPS Sort Facility in Watertown due to some sort of error, where my shipping town got listed at my billing town. Not the end of the world though. Isham had managed to pack alot of stuff into one little box. I was quite surprised what came out of there. Of course while unpacking I was so excited I didn’t take any pictures. After unpacking everything, I began the process of assembling the air tools. After the obligatory period of making noises with the various tools.
The next step of my adventure was to figure out how to make dimples with my pneumatic squeezer as my DRDT-2 has yet to arrive. That turned out to be pretty simple and soon enough i was a dimpling machine. After dimpling the edges, it was time to tackle some rivets. This I KNEW I was going to screw up. And it didn’t take long. After drilling out the first rivet, twice I decided to put the rivet gun down and try the squeezer. I ended up having much better luck with this, yet I know the rivets are not perfect. Next was the hinge, after match drilling both sides i decided to try back riveting. This was far easier than using a bucking bar. But I managed to over squeeze alot of rivets. I guess ill learn the timing eventually. The lower hinge I ended up using my squeezer again. Here is where I let it sit for the night. On Saturday I had flight school & a christmas party so nothing got touched.
Today, I came in and finished up the toolbox. The first thing I tackled was the AN470 rivets that hold the front stiffner on. You can tell which ones I used the rivet gun on and which ones I squeezed. The rivet gun ones look TERRIBLE. The latch is probably where I got my head out of my butt and figured some things out. When mounting the handle, I discovered the flow valve had more than 6 settings, which made me feel pretty dumb. Over all, the box looks good from far, but far from good up close. I’ll chalk this up to learning.
Next I started the Wing Kit. I didn’t really make it far in this as I don’t have my DRDT-2 yet. I got the stiffners cut, & deburred all the parts. That’s pretty much all I can do till next Friday.