Wings: Full picture, though not complete.

Though not yet complete, they appear to be.  Here are a few pics of the left wing with tip, aileron and flap.  Much larger chord than, say, a Lancair.  Curious what a completed empennage looks like?  Go here.

 

Zero degrees flaps for cruise.

210 degrees flaps.  For when you really gotta slow down.

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.

Wings: Flaps. Bottom skins on and trailing edge wedges placed.

I put the bottom skins on the flaps today.  First, the wedges had to be placed.  The plans call for 3M F9460PC VHB™ Adhesive Transfer Tape.  I snagged a 0.5 in x 60 yard roll as that was the perfect width for the wedge and that length should cover all the control surfaces for the aircraft.  It's double-sided so when you pull the paper off to expose the other side, you'd best hope you're not fighting a poorly adhered underside.  

First the left flap.  After cleaning the parts to be adhered (and they were, surprisingly, extremely dirty), I placed a strip of the tape on the top skin and immediately pulled the paper off.  Turns out that's a bad idea since you need to let the tape "cure" to the metal for a while.  So I was meticulously scraping the tape from the paper with a knife, trying to keep it intact.  I placed the other strip of tape on the wedge thinking that would make my life easier.  It didn't since the wedge has a lot more holes in it than the skin, which means there's less material for the tape to bond to, again making it hard to pull the paper off.  

Anyway, here's the left flap, weighted down (with anything I could find) after the wedge was adhered and cleco'd.

For the right flap, I taped both the skins and waited 15 minutes for the tape to "cure" before pulling the paper off.  It helps to keep the skins separated so I used little wood blocks as shims for that purpose.

And here are the flaps resting until I rivet their trailing edge wedges.  Eying them down their sight-lines suggests these puppies are going to look nice and straight.  You can also see the aileron parts in the background, awaiting their due attention.

Wings: Flaps. Bucking bottom skins to spar flange.

It's a tight fit in there, but it is doable.  Again, use the Popsicle stick method to let the narrow, heavy bucking bar float above any shop or factory heads in the way.

The plans say you can use pop rivets for the the fasteners straddling the hinge assemblies.  

But I was able to get the mushroom set in there on one side after removing the spring (a fellow -14 builder clued me in to that idea).  On the other side, I used my 12" extended back riveting set since I couldn't quite get it with the mushroom.  For the latter approach, the right amount of pressure was necessary to keep the piston on the rivet head.

Good times.

Google is having trouble with their blogspot code.  The text widget broke so I can't update the sidebar contents.  I'm up to 436.5 hours.  I bet wing completion happens at 700.

Wings: Flaps. Back riveting top skins.

The two aft-most main rib rivets on the top skins of the flap are back riveted to preserve the trailing edge shape.  I bought a 12"x12"x0.25" piece of steel ($30!) and some 6"x2"x0.25" poplar scant spacers to create a reasonable surface to work against.  I even used my other back riveting plate to help out.

Placing the flap on this surface and weighting it down to keep it from falling over (since it's nose-heavy with all the fore clecos), back riveting was trivial.  

Here are a couple of shop heads.

And the left flap's top skin completely in place, waiting for the wedge to get attached to it after the bottom skin.

Wings: Flaps. Trailing edge wedges.

The plans call for the (AEX?) trailing edge wedge to be countersunk on both sides to accept the skin dimples.  Not an easy task given the wedge angle.  So, I fashioned a jig to present the wedge straight to the countersink cage.  Thanks to Ed and Bill for the idea.

The jig uses a scrap section of the wedge with a couple of countersunk screws driven into wood to hold the wedge down.  When the wedge you want countersink is placed on top of jig, the face of the wedge remains parallel to the face of the wood and cage (i.e., when properly stacked, the wedge that's mounted on the wood offers a -12 degree angle to "cancel" out the 12 degree angle of the wedge you want to work on).  Just be sure to drill a few holes deep enough to accept some clecos to hold everything down.

An example of  how to align the wedge you wish to work on.

Here is the tool illustrating usage.  Drill press makes things go quickly.  Ultimately, I always cleco'd to the wood since it offered more stabilization of the part.  This was a trial run.

Here are all of the flap wedges countersunk on both sides.  Because the opposite countersinks meet in the middle due to the material thickness, one side of the wedge doesn't look as pretty as the other if you look real close.  Probably should have slowed the drill press down.

We'll see if this was a good technique when it comes to completing the flap.

Wings: Flaps. Spar-nose-rib rivets.

First, Van's reordered the section numbers in the plans as of 25-Sep-13, so I'll cease using the numbers to avoid confusion. (I've updated page references in the blog prior to the above date to reflect the new ordering.  Hopefully I got them all.  13-Jul-14.)

Now, the AN426AD3-4.5 rivets that hold the flap skin, nose skin and main ribs together are nestled in there pretty good.  I couldn't find a good way to buck them (other than the squeezable inboard- and outboard-most ones).  The challenge is to get a bar in there that doesn't damage the factory head of the AN470AD4-4 spar-rib rivets and provides a good angle to make a nice shop head.

So, I..."buckled" and...bought a tungsten (wolfram) bucking bar that was narrow enough to fit in the space near the spar flange.  I decided to splurge on this bar since I wanted something small and heavy.  More weight means less control of the bar is necessary on the part of the holder.  Very important, especially when going solo.  I was surprised at the density of this material.  Don't think I've held something this dense before.  Denser than lead.

Placing some properly sized Popsicle sticks (thank you band saw) that are just slightly higher than the factory heads on the AN470AD4-4 spar-rib rivets, the bar can hit the AN426AD3-4.5 rivet that I want to buck and float above those AN470AD4-4 guys without damaging them.

And here's a nicely bucked rivet in the space of concern.  No part of the flap body or other rivets have been touched.

I think I'll be able to use this bar when bucking the few buckable rivets on the bottom skins.

Wings: Flaps. Top skins on.

Left and right flaps have their top skins on, save just a few rivets each.

Below are the left rod end subassemblies.  Yes, on the inboard one I foolishly match-drilled and countersunk for a non-existent nutplate.  Consider them lightening holes.

 

It's not easy to squeeze some of the ribs onto the spar since other immediately adjacent ribs impede access.  Below is my suggested sequence and method of setting the rivets on those ribs that are crowded out a bit.

Left inboard hinge pair subassemblies.  The main rib's rivets were bucked.

Unfortunately, I initially tried to squeeze the outboard rib's rivets.  The middle rivet was easy, but the flanges separated slightly around the rivet shaft.  In order to access the upper and lower rivets I had to bend the main rib quit a bit.  Though the plans mention that such an approach is acceptable, you have to consider that the flange will be pulled from being flush against the spar.  This means a potential space between the spar and rib flange opens up and becomes an actual space for your rivet shank to have a party in and fill.  The left image is how that comes out.  Look at the left and right rivets - no narrative necessary.  The right side is what it looks like after I pulled out the rivet on the left (which is the bottom of the spar) and instead bucked it.  You can see that the removal process (a challenging affair given the limited access) elongated the hole so the replacement rivet doesn't sit in there nicely:  The shop end is short and now the spar is slightly deformed. 

I deemed that unacceptable.  Now, removing those left and right rivets wasn't going to be easy a second time.  The holes got even worse.  Here are the holes with a AN470AD4-5 (plans call for a -4) rivet placed in them.

An AN470AD5 nearly fit in them.  I didn't want to put that large of a rivet in there since I only have a 2x gun, don't have a rivet set for it and the flanges didn't need the additional stress from trying to buck such a rivet.  So for each side, I took an AN470AD4-5 (again, the plans call for a -4) and pre-squeezed to fit just snug in the hole.  Below are two pics showing, right-to-left, an AN470AD5-5, my pre-squeezed AN470AD4-5 and an AN470AD4-4.  This gives a good indication of how large I made that hole.

Here is the left side with the pre-squeezed rivet place in the hole.  It's a better fit, but isn't perfect.

I could then bend the spar back and get a better fit with all the flanges together.  The left image is from the left flap after (the now second) replacement with the pre-squeezed rivets.  The right image is the right flap in same place showing what things look like when you get it correct the first time.  Given the three layers coming together, looks like I should just have bucked them all on the right side.  That middle squeezed rivet separates out the flanges.

I'm pretty sure I'll be removing the two left flap rivets and just drilling up to an AD5.  I don't like how it all sits.  The right looks okay, save for that middle rivet which I can straighten up.

The hinge pair subassemblies call for the rivets along the joggled end to be riveted double flush.  I initially tried to buck these double flush rivets but because it's very hard to keep the subassembly flush against the backing plate, they didn't sit nice and it was too easy to injure the part with the rivet set.  So, after sanding out the damage I caused, I decided to squeeze all of the double flush rivets on the joggles.  Having never done that before, I was pleased with the outcome.  Unless you look really close, you might have a hard time distinguishing the factory (left) and shop (right) heads.  Tip:  If you screwed up a machine countersink on one side of the joggle, just put the shop end in that countersink.  Problem solved! 

 

Left and right flap skeletons ready for skins.

Here the left flap sits with the top skin cleco'd, ready for riveting.

Right flap with most of top skin riveted.  The inner AN426AD3-4.5 rivets have yet to be bucked.  I decided I wanted a bucking partner for those.  Too easy to damage the factory heads on the main rib rivets when going solo.  Also the aft two-most rib rivets need to be back-riveted.

Left flap in same state parked in the (nearly empty!) wing crate next to a bottom flap skin and aileron skins.

And just to be complete, here are the backsides of the right and left flaps.