Wings: Fuel tanks. Sealant Prep.

I decided to redo my fuel tanks.  See here for why.  The entries specific to the redone tanks are here.

Following Mouser's approach, all internal parts have been traced around once I had the ribs cleco'd in.  I'm glad I did this since it uncovered that I didn't flute the ribs aggressively enough.  The alignment was so poor that the ribs would not line up properly with the skins.  Following a second shot at fluting, they lined up like butter (is that even a thing?).

 

The lines looks neat.

 

The lines are used to define the areas to mask out so that only the mating surfaces are scuffed, in an effort to preserve as much alodine as possible.  Plus, the lines will help delineate the areas where I don't want to sealant to go.  Following the scuffing, it was off to dimpling.  Need to be careful here since there are a few holes that do not get dimpled.

 

I had my first missed dimple.  The skin was lined up on the die and as I was bringing the DRDT-2 handle down, the skin moved and it was too late (I usually "snap" the handle down in a quick motion in an effort to make a "crisper" dimple).  I ended up opening a new hole partially overlapping the rivet hole.  The left image shows the hole immediately after the error on the exterior.  The right shows the interior after sanding it down (you can imagine it created one heck of a burr) and opening it up to take a Rivet of Shame, NAS1097AD4-3.5.  There's quite a gap around the shank still, so I need to evaluate if this is a reasonable approach to dealing with the issue or if I need to take a different action.  Too bad this happened on a tank skin.

 

I snagged a manual syringe gun to apply the sealant in what I hope is a cleaner approach.  This idea was shared in this thread, specifically, post 16.  And here's another great thread on sealant application.

Update 3-Jan-14:    The manual syringe gun isn't ideal and it's expensive.  I obtained a Semco sealant gun for more than half the cost.  It is far superior.