Center Section Top Skin Riveting

Dan H. came over today and we were able to set a few rivets. It is kind of an art to set rivets with a pneumatic gun & bucking bar. Very much like "Rosie" the riveter did in WWII.

Dan H. is on the wood stool driving the rivet with the pneumatic gun. I'm in the lawn chair holding the bucking bar trying to make nice looking shop heads on the rivets.

Remember from the flap kit. You don't want to smash them too much and you don't want to smash them too little. They have to be just right for maximum strength.

Some of the rivets I was able to reach with my main squeeze. When ever you are using a squeezer you are just about guaranteed to have nice uniformed shop heads on the rivets.

Here is a shot of the left edge of the center section from the bottom side. These are AN426AD-3-3.5 rivets set with the squeezer.

This is a shot of the top of the wing walk area. All flush rivets. It helps to write notes to yourself prior to riveting or for that matter even drilling holes. You can see in a glance what needs to be done.

All the writing is done with a sharpie. A so called permanent marker. They are not so permanent. Sharpie ink wipes off with denatured alcohol and a rag.

After Dan and I used up all the AN470AD-3-3.5 rivets Dan had to leave. It was a long afternoon.

I started laying out the next phase of the assembly. The control tunnel and fuselage stringers.

Lots of parts to find, align, cut, drill, debur, & dimple. Sounds like fun!

Brian

Flap & Reinforcement

After inventory, I took the skins off the center section (CS). I mounted the Flap Handle and elevator control to the CS. Next, I took half the hinge from the Flap and started prep work on mounting the Flap to the bottom skin.

I had to find several parts and make a couple of filler pieces. The Flap Reinforcement (FR) was in the big box I keep pushing around the garage. To fit the Flap to the CS I took a lot of measurements and looked at a lot of prints. When I started to align the FR to the Rear Spar I found that the FR was going to need a lot of notches in it to mount flush on the Rear Spar. Someone on the Mustang Aero web site told me it would look like Swiss Cheese when completed. It did!

To have evenly spaced rivets I took a 36" & a 12" metal rulers and drilled #44 holes in them to use as drill guides. I drilled holes in the bottom skin where the Flap Hinge and filler pieces will be riveted to the skin. The drill guides worked great. (I used a #44 drill. Final drilling was a #40.)

I Cleco-ed the Flap Hinge & Reinforcement to the bottom skin. Mounted the bottom skin to the CS and used my drill guide to drill through the FR & Rear Spar. They came out pretty good.

All I have to do now is debur and dimple the CS, bottom skin, top skin, and flap pieces. Two of my favorite things to do! I need to find a better way to debur holes. During the Flap project deburing was very boring and it hurt my fingers. I will have to experiment and find a better way.

Brian