January 9, 2009: F-1203A Bulkhead (cont.)

Pg. 21-10: F-1203A Bulkhead
I picked up from the last session on step 6 with the final drilling of 4 bulkhead holes as called out in "detail A." Using the uni-bit on the drill press worked great here and resulted in round correctly spaced holes. The tricky part was step 7. The hole that had "hatched area" to be removed with "dike/wire cutters", neither of which I had. So, I used snips to carefully make cuts in the hatched areas and was able to snip away a little at a time. The I used a file to finish. Wanting to be sure I had the hole correct, I read ahead in the plans to locate what was intended to go through the hole so I could use it to check size of hole. Unfortunately, I could not find a future reference to this hole (must be in the finishing kit section). Machine counter sinking of holes went fwd smoothly.

I primed the non-alcad F-1203C stub spar receptacle with the self-etching rattle can primer from NAPA.

Step 10 has you final drill #30 any holes in the process of putting the stub spar receptacle assembly together if the holes are too tight. I found that if I clecoed the parts together and then insterted a hole punch in the hole (like Jim Cones use of an awl) to sort of "wiggle" around, helped line up all the holes. No final drilling was necessary to make the parts fit.

I then moved to step 1 on p. 21-11, separating the 2 F-1203E Bulkhead Doublers and deburred. Before quiting for the night I installed these on the bulkhead, being sure to put them on the appropriate side of the bulkhead (very important!).

January 7, 2009: Stub Spar Assembly and F-1203A Bulkhead

Worked on F-1203A bulkhead and final drilling holes to 7/16 & 3/4. This went very well using the "step" drill and the drillpress to do the job. Holes turned out uniform and appropriately placed. Next I removed metal on the final large hole (see p. 21-10, step 7). I used the tin snips to remove some of the material and filed the rest. The result is good, but cannot be certain it is perfectly circular, but it looks like it. I read ahead in the plans to see what will go through this hole so that I could test it, but could not find anything. This may be something in the finishing kit. I also prepared the F-1203C Stub Spar Receptacles, deburring and filing to create a close fit to the rounded ends of the stub spar assemblies. Then primed this part.

January 6, 2009: Bulkhead Caps, Rollers and Control Column

I started the evening build on page 21-09 and completed steps 2-5 in about an hour. As usual, the deburring took about 1/3 of this time. Riveting the bulkhead caps in place was straight forward. I took the advice of others and taped over the holes that were NOT to receive a rivet. I think this is a good strategy compared to using a marker.

Installation of the rollers (step 5) was also easy. The only question I have is how much to torque the bolt. I took care here so as not to strip the nut plate as well as making sure that the roller still rolled. (I don't know, but I think the nutplate has a natural tendency to act as a locknut.)

Then after dinner, I completed steps 1- 3 on page 21-10. At least 20 minutes of the time was spent scratching my head to figure out what was called for in terms of MCS the rivet holes. (I'm learning a lot here but loosing hair!) Deburring was thorough to be sure the parts matched and fit well. My biggest challenge was counter sinking the rivet holes. Before MCS the actual part, I test the depth on scrap material. Still, sometimes the countersink is too deep, while other times it is perfect with no change in the cage.

January 5, 2009: Completion of the Seat Floor Assemblies

I spent about 2.5 hours tonight on the seat floor assemblies and all went well. The close-in hand rivet squeezer is a must for riveting the seat ribs to the bulk head. I also used the wedge tool I fabricated following other's example, e.g. Jim Cone, Rudy, etc.

Tomorrow I will move on to working the right bulkhead cap and roller on page 21-09.

January 3-4, 2009: Mid Fuse Ribs & Bottom Skins

The photos on this entry may be in reverse order. I prepared all the seat rib assemblies, involving dimpling, installing platenuts, etc. All went well till I got to page 21-05, step 12, and began installing the flaperon mixer bracket. It was here that I discovered that I had put the mixer together incorrectly. Fortunately I discovered this before riveting or doing any damage. The image on the left shows the incorrect assembly.

I didn't trust that I had installed the rear spar recepticle correctly so the photo shows that I tested the fit by taking the assembly to the wing and testing the fit. It fit very well so I am happy.

All went well after this. It was tricky on page 21-06, step 7 with cutting the seatback hinge. Thankfully I had kept up Van's forum and found a caution there to measure an extra .5 inch so that I made the cut at 10.5 inches instead of 10. This allows for the hinge to be identical to the one depicted on this page. My screw-up here was in removing the center 2 eyelets on each hinge. I tried to cut these with a hacksaw, but there was not enough space for the blade. I then went to the bandsaw, but because my blade is too coarse, I strayed off and made a mistake with the cut. I ended up using my scotchbrite wheel and this worked the best.

We had snow over Christmas and all our fantastic adult children were home for the Holidays (sounds like a song coming on!). The snowy house picture is our Christmas card and also helps explain why I was away from the RV-12 for the better part of 2 weeks.

The plans are very clear and with thorough reading (and re-reading) one should not have a problem here.

December 10-17, 2008: Baggage Floor, Ribs & Seat Belt Attach Lugs

Over the course of the 7 days, I completed pages 21-02 through 21-04 in about 15 hours. No big challenges, just taking time to read the directions muliple times and then consult again when I start each step. I bought the "snips" recommended by Jim Cone and they have been very handy to have, saving time on the separation of parts. The only parts I primed on these pages were the baggage ribs (then only the mating surfaces) and the F-1206C (rear spar receptacles). The rear spar receptacles take a lot of deburring and since I envision these parts seeing lots of action with the installing and removing of the wings, I thought it best to prime. Everything on these pages went together without problems.

December 2, 2008: Baggage Floors

Next process complete starts on p. 21-02 and is about attaching the baggage floor skins to the center section aft bulkhead. This was quite the deal! 1st, having drilled the holes at some angle approaching 90 degrees created problems because the baggage floor skin fits better the closer the hole is to the 90 degrees. I needed to match drill a place or 2 (or 3) to make allow the rivets to go through. The challenge then became how to squeeze these rivets with little space to do so. I split a rivet and had to drill it out and redo. There are a couple more that I need to replace tomorrow. I'm trying to do this as per plans and the suggested tool list, which has you use a hand squeezer rather than a bucking bar and air gun. I found this all to work better by standing the bulkhead on its side with the baggage floors jutting up. This all took a long time (8 hours) over the course of 2 days.