Finished attaching the HS skins so that’s it for that part of the airplane for now. Still need to attach the fiberglass tips but I’ll do that later with other fiberglass work.

Almost finished attaching the HS skins. Just the rear spar and end ribs to attach. These will be easy as I can use the squeezer.

Wanting to press on I decided to finish the rivets on the HS front spar that the squeezer couldn’t reach with the rivet gun. Pretty straight forward once I had developed a technique and found an airpressure that worked well (55psi).

I carried on assembling the HS. Got the right HS skin riveted to the ribs and front spar. The left one should be much quicker. Drilled out about 3 on the AN426AD3 rivets, mostly because I had overdriven them. I’m using 35psi on the gun and that seems about right.

One thing I did discover is that the AD3-3.5 rivets called for in the plans are a little on the short side and hard therefore to get a shop head that is within spec. Sure they are probably the right ones for the thickness of material used, but after dimpling and painting they seem a little short. I decided to use AD3-4’s instead so I’ll need more of those. I have also bought some tank dimple dies which are a little deeper to accomodate the proseal when making the tanks. I’ll try using them on the sub-structure on the wings and see if the dimples nest better. That may allow me to use the 3.5’s.

Had a big day on the project today. Finished all the prep work on the VS and HS parts ready for priming except for the VS skin. I wanted to start setting up to paint and figured I already had enough parts to manage.

The edges of the HS skins needed to be smoothed and polished. First off I filed them with a fine flat file to remove the bumps left from the shearing at the factory, then ran the small grooved scotchbrite wheel down them with the die grinder. Same process I had used for the spar channels. Next all those holes needed to be deburred. This is a pretty tedious job and I’m not 100% happy with the results I’m getting with the debur tool I have. There seems to be some very slight chattering occurring. I quick search on Vansairforce shows I’m not the only one not happy with this tool. I have ordered a single hole debur bit to replace it but the one I have got will do for now.

I then dimpled the skins using the pneumatic squeezer for the edges and the DRDT-2 for the rest. This was a quick job with these two tools.

The HS and VS ribs were all prepped up ready for primer too.

I set up my paint booth (4 $2.50 tarpaulins from Bunnings!) in the garage and cleaned all the parts with acetone. The cleaning process also removes my sharpie pen markings so from here on I needed to keep the left and right parts separated.

I made a bunch of wire hooks to hang the parts onto the painting rack with and the primed them in batches. This was the first time I have used a 2 part paint system. It’s pretty nasty stuff so I was covered up from head to toe and wore respirator and goggles. The primer was easy to mix and the gun I had seemed to suit it well. Results got better as I worked through the batches. Little bit of orange peel on some bits where I layed it on a bit too heavy. Also, a mist coat first definitely helps. I didn’t bother practicing on anything first as this is just primer and it’s on the inside of the plane so finish is not important - no one will ever see it.

After I had cleaned up the paint stuff and had dinner, I just had to go and rivet something together to I setup the rear HS spar and reinforcing bars. I remembered a tip to orientate these rivets so the manufactured head in towards the rear. This makes it easier to rivet the back row of rivets on the skins as there is not much room to get your squeezer in. Unfortunately, due to the way the spar flange lies, I can’t rivet these this way round with my 3″ yoke. I need a longeron yoke which I don’t have. I’ll probably buy one one day but in the meantime I’m going to try and borrow one locally just for this job.
So with no luck on with the rear spar I moved on to the front one. managed to squeeze a couple of rivets there, but will need the longeron yoke for some of those too. Bugger!