Major Sections

20 October 2013

Wings: Flaps. Trailing edges and complete.

The flaps are essentially complete.  I riveted the trailing edges today.  It surprisingly took only 2.5 hours to do both flaps.  The 3M F9460PC VHB™ Adhesive Transfer Tape held the wedges just fine.  If it failed at anything it was that it left a little booger of tape trapped in the dimple on the shop head side.  When running your fingers over the set rivet, the little booger can fool you into thinking the rivet isn't fully flush.

Here's how the rivets looked when prepped for bucking.  This appears to indicate that I did not match drill the wedge perpendicular to the chord properly.  However, I think two things are at play here:  1) the factory head of the rivet is aligned into its dimple which is normal to the skin and 2) when countersinking the wedge the countersink pilot may have negated the trajectory of the match drilled holes.


Here are the completed flaps.  I left the tape on the top skin side in case I decide to adjust things with the rivet gun later.


The trailing edges seem straight.  However, other than sighting down the edge, I haven't checked by using a straightedge.  The top skins, where the manufactured heads sit, are perfectly flat.  But one characteristic that does bother me is the shop head side (i.e., the bottom skin side) isn't perfectly flat, though the shop heads themselves are flush.  The skins depress around their dimples into the countersink of the wedge.  See below.  Did I countersink too deep on the wedges (here's how I did it)?  Did I drive the rivets too hard?  I can't find pictures on the 'net to compare my work to (oddly, the factory head side is the one typically shown).



Also, the skins do separate from the wedges a bit at the edges.  I wonder if that's due to the tape or even countersinks that were too shallow (ya, opposite of the previous hypothesis). Here's a good approach to measuring the countersinks a priori.  The below image shows an edge-on close-up of the trailing edge on my left flap on the inboard side.  I put a roll of masking tape on the top skin to give the camera something to focus on.  The upper gap is 0.023" as measured by the feeler.


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