With the gracious help of my friend, we banged out the right leading edge in about 5 hours. Only had to drill out two rivets (one due to an edge strike on the bucking bar and the other due to the shank folding over). No Rivets of Shame necessary. All that remains for this piece is cutting and fitting the landing light lens and fixing one skin hole that I missed dimpling (needs a dimple and a rivet). We also riveted the access port doubler on the left edge and cleco'd everything together for its riveting fun.
Here is the right side, waiting for its landing light lens.
Here is the right side, waiting for its landing light lens.
Here is the left side, cleco'd and ready to be banged out.
And a view down the top of the right (foreground) and left (background) leading edges.
Couple of points:
- When cleco'ing the ribs into the skin, start by keeping the skin outside of the cradle and cleco fore-to-aft, alternating top and bottom. This way the skin tightens around the ribs rather than forcing the skin to mold to the ribs. Once you get the clecos about 6-7 back on each rib, put the whole piece into the cradle and complete the clecos.
- Put a cleco in every hole to make sure all is tight.
- Tape the heck out of the edges of the bucking bar to avoid marring any surfaces.
- Keep the bucking bar and mushroom set orthogonal to the skin.
- You may have to drill out holes to get the rivet to sit straight. There is a lot of curvature being forced into these parts and not everything will line up initially.
- Calibrate the air pressure so about 1.5 seconds of gun burst can fully set a rivet. Saves lots of time.
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