Fun Stuff: Number of rivets in wing and empennage plans.

Since building has slowed down due to my running out of space, I thought it would be interesting to count the number of rivets (bucked, pulled, pop, etc.) called out for in the wing and empennage plans.  Rivets called out in future plans (e.g., remaining rivets for aft fuselage attach) have not yet been counted.  My uneducated guess for the number remaining would be about 5,000.

I will update this list as my build progresses.  It will live on the blog in the right column at the very bottom underneath the parts origin and skin thickness lists.  Direct link will be http://rv-14a.blogspot.com/#rivet_number

Number of Rivets in an RV-14A 

Empennage and wing plans only 

Section	Rivets
6. Vertical Stabilizer	300
7. Rudder	575
8. Horizontal Stabilizer	944
9. Elevator (Left)	623
9. Elevator (Right)	531
10. Aft Fuselage	1,239
11. Empennage Attach	0
12. Empennage Fairings	234
13. Main Spars	302
14. Main Ribs	274
15. Rear Spars	318
16. Top Skins	1,310
17. Leading Edges	796
18. Fuel Tanks	1,580
19. Systems Routing	0
20. Bottom Skins	1,812
21. Flaps	958
22. Ailerons	662
23. Aileron Actuation	50
24. Wing Tips	214
OP-55. Wing Tip Nav/Strobe	0

Total: 12,722
(less those from sections 25-53 and other optional kits)

If one were to include the number drilled out, dropped and/or spilled, that number would be about 2x!  Total for empennage is 4,446 and total for wings is 8,276.  The tail dragger would be very, very close to this number (in fact, same for wings).

Want to wrap your brain around the mindlessness of the tasks involved in building a kit plane?  Consider that each of those rivets represents at least one hole (sometimes many more when parts are stacked) and each of those holes gets at least two deburring tasks and sometimes match/final drilling and/or countersinking/dimpling and/or sealant application too.  You can then calculate an upper-bound on the number of tasks per hole using some worst-case assumptions:  Just 6x the number of rivets to get a grasp on the number of tasks involved with the holes in the wing and empennage kits.