So while the wing work was puttering to an end, I started looking at aileron stuff. Here are the raw stiffeners...two ailerons have eight top and eight bottom equals thirty-two stiffeners. I stripped the blue off of the pieces and trimmed half of them. I then showed Nathan how to do it and he completed the raw cuts of the stiffeners, then used the belt sander to get them to the final shape. A turn on the Scotchbrite wheel will finish it off.

And, then on to aileron brackets. Four brackets...two inner and two outer. Took a bit to figure out because as near as I can tell the drawing is mislabeled with an incorrect part number for two of the angle aluminum pieces. Figured it out eventually.

And here are the four brackets laid out left to right. One needs to pay particular attention to rivet callouts here...the inboard brackets have five or six flush rivets, and the outboard brackets have three. It would be very easy to mess this assembly up. It still could happen...I don't have them done yet. Just ready to go as this weekend ends.

So, continued slow but steady progress. Hope to get a few more things done this week as I'll be in town. A bit of a treat to be home for the week.

March 21, 2011

Not a lot of progress over the past two weeks...my employer wanted me to work, which I suppose is somewhat expected. Thus, I only got one day, and a partial one at that, of work in the hangar. But, I made the best of it, doing a bit of clean up work and then pressing forward.

Well, after doing a bunch of other stuff, I jumped back into the aileron construction. In short order, I finished the stiffener preparations, clecoed them into position, then match drilled them with a #41 drill. Did this on both ailerons. Marked them each and removed the bunch. Now I need to deburr the holes I drilled, then all need to be dimpled. Then, back rivet the stiffeners to the aileron skins. Maybe during my next session.

Okay, then, maybe during my next session.

March 30, 2011

Okay, then, worked on the ailerons this past week. Not too much, mind you. But, I did the final work on the stiffeners, then primed them. Also primed the inside of the trailing edge skins. Next up for those parts: back rivet them together. Then do the trailing edge bend to bring the front edge gap to the width of the spar.

But enough about that that stuff. I started working on the basic framework of the ailerons, match drilling and clecoing the parts together for the first time. Here is the right side of the left aileron, with the aft rib, the leading edge rib, and the spar all clecoed together. Barely visible on the far side is the inboard aileron mounting piece.

Ditto for the right side. The outer edge of the left aileron. Not too much to write home about but it helps me to put it together to see how it will come together.

And the whole frame on the workbench. Need to do the prep work on these parts, and then the same on the right aileron frame. Maybe Saturday.

And, by the way, no photos, but I did also add half of those extra rivets to the wing under the fuel tank...rib to spar. The top rivets would prove to be a bit harder since you can't use a flush rivet set...not enough room between the top skin and where the rivet sits on the spar. Instead, I will use pulled flush rivets for this part. Need to use the right ones. Maybe Saturday.

April 12, 2011

Pressing on over the past two weeks, not much progress for most of the period but I did get a bit done (finally) on Saturday and Monday of this past week, in getting the ailerons ready for riveting.

Going back to the weekend before, I did the match drilling of the ailerons, using a #41 for the upper spar and a #30 for the lower spar to allow the larger pulled rivets.

Another view of the same aileron.

And here are the aileron mounting brackets being drilled on each end of the spar. You have two ribs and one bracket attached to each end of the aileron spars.

Back to the aft section of each aileron. Here are the stiffeners being back riveted into position. That went pretty well; it was such a big deal when I first did this with the elevators in 2009. Not such a big deal now and they turned out just fine.

Time to bend the aileron skins, so I returned to the last method used for the elevators. Not fond of the wooden bending brake, and use two healthy pieces of angle iron, one of which is bolted to the table. The aileron skin is securely taped to the work bench, and then the other piece of angle iron is clamped over the aileron skin bend.

Thusly. I had to work this a couple of times to bend as far as it needed to go. I was not entirely satisfied with these skins, not because of this bend, but because of some dimples at the aft end of some of the stiffeners. The skins look okay, but not perfect. Well, not the first time and I better get used to it.

Okay, after the skins were bent I clecoed everything together and did the final match drilling of the skins.

A bit of a close up of one end all assembled. When it was all together I was not pleased how the aft end of the ribs lay against the trailing part of the ailerons, only on the outboard ends. Not sure why. I did some more fiddling and a bit more bending. I think I got it. We shall see.

He is the process of drilling the tab on the forward rib to the counterweight. You place the drill bit through the rib hole in the spar. As per the directions, worked just fine.

Okay, here are the prepped parts on the work bench. Note the counterweights (galvanized pipe) holes are match drilled to the aileron leading edge skin. Still a bit more prep work needed on the counterweights.

And, speaking of those leading edge holes....all the holes in the skin have to be dimpled for the coming rivets. The holes on the leading edge are a bit harder to do. I did the first one with the DRDT-2 dimpler...spreading the skin as wide as possible to avoid crimping as much as possible. Not real happy with those results so I did what I should have done in the first place...a bit of online research. Here is what I came up with: use the countersunk holes in the counterweight pipe as the female end of the dimpler. I used the male end and just whacked it a few times with a soft mallet. Worked fine with a minimum of crimping.

And the first one I did...is it good enough? Yep, after a judicious evaluation, the crimping is relatively minor and it is a cosmetic issue. The forward part of the aileron will mostly flush against the trailing edge of the wing. Works for me. This photo doesn't do the difference justice, but it gives an idea.

Last night, did the cleaning and priming of the aileron parts.

Mulled over the counterweight a bit...it is a dis-similar metal deal going on here. I decided to clean the pipes well, fill the interior of the pipes with a good quality metal primer, thinned a bit, and let that dry for the week. Then, I will come back and clean the exterior again, then prime and paint those surfaces. Should work.

And this table with aileron parts seen drying? Well, yes, my fuselage kit did arrive on Monday, April 11. Ordered on January 30, arrived on schedule over two months later. Coming soon: the detailed inventory of what is in this 340 plus pound box. Probably won't actually start the fuselage construction for a month or two...need to finish the ailerons and flaps, then mount those buggers on the wing, etc, etc. Soon enough.

April 19, 2011

Keeping at it over the past weekend, mostly on the ailerons but a bit on the lower skins also, doing some prep work.

I spent some time doing the prep work on the counterbalance, finishing the process with some enamal paint on the exterior. Then, following the instructions, I clecoed the counterbalance to the nose ribs, then the leading edge skin and the spar to the nose ribs/counterbalance assembly. The counterbalance is then riveted to the nose rib with a single pulled rivet.

Then the aft skins were attached to the spars. As you can see, I am doing both ailerons simultaneously. Works a bit better for me...setting stuff up only once. Here are the two ailerons awaiting riveting. The top rivets are all either bucked or squeezed. Most of the lower rivets are pulled. As can be seen in the aileron on the left here, the lower skin is left un-clecoed to allow access to the upper skin-to-spar rivets for bucking.

And this is how I did that. Taking a tip for the RV Factory which, in turn, had taken a tip from Chad, I assembled a little mini-fixture and attached it to my workbench to hold the ailerons while the top spar rivets are bucked.

Here is one of the ailerons mounted on the fixture, bottom side facing with the opening to allow access to the interior of the aileron.

And a bit of detail on how the spar is screwed to the fixture. Pretty simple, actually. And, it did hold the aileron quite rigidly. My only problem is my workbench is a bit high, making the reach over the top of the aileron to hold the rivet gun a bit awkward.

And, here are both ailerons with the top spar rivets and top nose rib rivets completed. During the riveting the rivet gun had a tendency to jump around a bit. I don't like using duct tape on the rivet set because it tends to leave bits of tape on the rivet after it is set...not just on the surface either. It gets down into the gap between the skin and rivet. Not good in my book. Anyways, my solution was to run a strip of duct tape down the skin adjoining the overlapping edge. The tape protected the skin and kept the gun from skipping, for the most part anyways. A few unwanted dings were experienced. And, of course, on the last spar rivet I drove I put a nice ding in the skin. But, I tell myself, this is cosmetic stuff, which it is. To be dealt with in the later paint prep work. Rather not have it, though.

Before ending my sessions for the week, I added the main ribs and riveted the top skins to the main ribs also. Added one more ding to my skin, again on the last rivet I was squeezing. Kicked myself a bit over that one, because if I had been a bit more careful and worked a bit slower, it would have easily been avoided.

May 2, 2011

Two weeks since I updated this page. Just a hit and miss two weeks but did make some progress. Slow going, though, as I had other time demands.

The ailerons were finished, though. The last bit of riveting was straightforward and not recorded on pixels for posterity. However, once they were done I temporarily mounted them on the wings, both because I had to see what they looked like (cool) and also just to get them out of the way. Don't really want to back over them with the car. Turned out okay.

I wanted to start the push tubes for the ailerons to get the priming process started. I pulled out the unused-to-date Harbor Freight chop saw I bought years ago. Don't count on the precision offered by the tool as I had to make some adjustments to make 90 degree cuts, but once set up it worked fine on both the big and little push tubes.

Here are the two sets of tubes with the accompanying hardware ready to be set up for drilling.

I drilled the small tubes using a borrowed drill press, but decided the large push tubes could be hand drilled in a satisfactory manner. So I did. Six pulled rivets in each of the tube ends to hold the rod end holder, so six holes each 60 degrees apart. I misdrilled one of the holes a bit...not enough to worry about. Just cosmetic at this point. Marked the holes and ends well...much easier to put back together that way.

I then primed the insides of all four tubes as recommended by Van's....plugged the ends and filled the tubes with liquid primer...rolled it all about a for a while, then drained the tubes (for quite a while), then they were set aside to dry. No photos...but it worked without making a mess. Next for tubes...the large ones will be exterior primed and painted, then riveted. The small ones....just riveting.

Nathan was helping on Saturday. I had already prepped the flap spars so Nathan went ahead and clecoed the flap ribs, spars, and bottom skins together. We scratched our heads a few times trying to figure out the ribs. The plans only show the left flap, and all ribs have the flanges on the left. There is a note on the plans saying that all the FL-705 rib flanges on the right flap should also be on the left. Not specified, though, is the orientation of the FL-704-R inboard rib on the right flap. We figured out that it had to be oriented toward the right in order for the FL-706B plate to mount properly. A little note on the plans would have save some time but I guess the thinking is that we are smarter now than we were before and should be able to figure this stuff out.

End result...the flap assembly is underway. I need to fabricate some shims, as expected, to fit between the aft end of the ribs and the little rear "spar" bent into the lower skin. Also, I need to fabricate two spacers required on each flap for the lower skin, as per the plans.

This past week I pushed along on the flaps, getting ready to do some assembly work.

First off, I had to fabricate some spacers. These are needed if the ribs don't meet the rear "spar" of the lower flap skin, which is really just the end of the skin formed as a perpendicular surface. For whatever reason, the rib and the spar don't always meet up. For me, one of the flaps fit without the spacers; the other one, as pictured here, needed them for all four ribs.

So, here are four spacers fabricated on the left, and on the right are two spacers fabricated for each flap to fit on the lower surface of the aft end of the ribs.

And here we go placing a 6.3 degree bend in the FL-706B part that eventually will accept the actuating rod that move the flaps. I think it turned out to be 6.35 degrees...right. The main thing....get it to fit where it goes.

And, here is the lower flap skin after the hinge was drilled and clecoed into position. Fitting the hinge is a bit tricky because of potential rivet edge distance issues. The minimum edge distance is 3/16 of an inch, but from what I can tell it needs to be near the minimum on the flap side to provide some working room for adjustments on the wing side. In any event, mine turned out to be pretty close to the minimum. I took some careful measurements of the flaps and where they mount on the wing. We shall see soon enough if this all works out.

And here is the other side, showing the hinge clecoed to the flap. I drew a 1/4 line on the drilling side of the hinge, one that was visible through the holes in the skin and spar, but on the other side I drew a 3/16 inch minimum edge distance line, and that's the one that can be seen here. Happily, all the drilled holes met the minimum.

So, I also did some preparation work on the upper skins...edge finishing, deburring, and dimpling. More of that to come on the other parts, then cleaning and priming, and then do the assembly work. Traveling again right now, so the next sessions will be next Saturday.

May 24, 2011

More work on the flaps this past week and pretty much finished them up.

After all the prep work, it was time to put the flaps back together, this time on a permanent basis. Here is the left flap assembly being clecoed together.

Here are the two flap assemblies ready for riveting.

As per the construction manual, a simple jig was assembled. I used a rib to set the shape, then used a jig saw to make identical cuts on both pieces. The whole thing was then temporarily attached to the work bench.

And here is one of the flaps in the jig.

Tight working conditions inside the flap but my little tungsten bucking bar fit with just enough room.

Since the rear spar is not perpendicular to the bottom skin, a bit of care needs to be taken to keep the bucking bar square with the rivet. This seemed to work pretty well for me. I added two layers of duct tape to one edge of the edge that would be rested upon spar while riveting.

This is the poor man's way to create some control over the bucking bar when one's hand is deep inside an RV-8 flap. Tape it appropriately to the index finger. Worked pretty well for me.

So, here is the left flap pretty much riveted together.

So, I spent a bit of time working on the hinges that attach the flaps to the aft edge of the wing. Part of that time was spent figuring out how the hinge pins should be secured. I decided to do what several (many) others have done. I used some scrap hinge and fabricated a hinge pin holder. Basically, I riveted two pieces of hinge, each with two loops to allow the hinge pin to be held securely. Here is the part being prepped for drilling and riveting.

Here is the part fabricated and ready to be installed.

And here is the part installed. This is mounted on the flap spar using a nut plate installed on the inside of the flap at roughly the mid point on the spar. A section of the hinge is removed adjacent to the the hinge pin holder, and the hinge pins are bent to meet the holder, and it is secured to the spar.

Not really shown here is how I chose to fit and drill the hinges on the aft wings. Basically, I ascertained that there were problems in drilling due to the need to drill through the lower skin and the flap brace to get to the hinge, all of which need to line up. So, instead, I fitted the hinge between the skin and flap brace which allowed me to drill much more accurately. Once I had drilled about 10% of the holes, I pulled the flap off and remounted it properly with the flap brace sandwiched between the flap hinge and lower wing skin. Then I match drilled the remaining holes. The gap between the aileron and the flap is supposed to be 0.250 inches...I aimed for about 0.245 or so to keep tight to the ailerons to avoid interference with the fuselage later. My main effort was made to keep the gap consistent from forward to aft end of the surfaces, and also to keep the trailing edges matched. I was pleased with the overall results.

So, when the weekend was over, the flaps were done and mounted, as were the ailerons. Next up: back up to wings to fit the control push tubes for the ailerons and install the pitot mast on the lower right wing. Those tasks will pretty much finish up the work on the wings, at least for the time being.