Fuse Side Skins

Sarah and I took a short flight up to KVTI today with our friend Derek to attend a fly-in grill-out cosponsored by our friends at Walter Aviation. It was a great evening of seeing old friends, ramp-wandering, recounting OSH15 stories, and of course munching on some delicious food, including as I was told "all the cake you want". That is a dangerous combination of words. It was delicious, but keeping in mind our weight and balance limitations for the the three of us in the Warrior we flew up in, I only ate one piece. I swear.

On the flight back to Marion, we decided to call up KCID approach and poke into the Class C airspace to take some photos of downtown and fly over the Cedar Rapids Kernels game that a number of our friends were attending for a work event. Keeping FAR 91.119 in mind concerning flight over congested areas, I didn't make quite as low of a pass as I might have wanted to. However, I did rock my wings to say hello, and although there would have been no way to see it for sure I hear that it was reciprocated by a wave or two from the ground. :-)

Derek took this really cool photo of downtown!

Passing over the Kernels game ~1500'AGL

Downtown Cedar Rapids, flying over the Cedar River

Anyway, once we got back home it was time to get back to work for a relatively short build session. Derek stopped by too, and although we didn't have much for him to work on this time, he got to experience firsthand the Mike & Sarah Show, using our headsets to communicate with each other through the firewall and side skins. He took a few pics to chronicle the process:

Setting the floor rib-to-firewall 4-4 flush rivets. This probably could/should have been done earlier, but for sure needs to be done before installing the forward floor covers.

Riveting the bottom of the forward side skin to the floor channel

Sarah poised on the inside of the fuselage with the bucking bar

We tried to keep the mood light :-)

I think we only got through maybe 20 or so rivets tonight, but they were a pretty difficult set of 20 and it was a pretty late start given the events earlier in the evening. We'll finish the rest of them tomorrow or whenever we can both get some time to get back to it. Until next time, that's it for now!

Fuse Side Skins

The end of Section 29 is getting so close I can smell it! Although, I'm not sure if we're really actually that close, or if it's just a really strong smell :-)

Continued today with riveting the side skins, and by this point I believe about 95% of all rivets in this section have been set... yay! I think we'll need one more partner session to do the R lower fuse channel and the aft bottom edges, and we should be all done with riveting through section 29-18. After that, it looks like all that's left to do is install the rear seat vents, the fwd cabin floor, the landing gear mounts, and then one last lil' rib (F-1088-L/R) that has been left out for now to keep open access to the forward floor areas.

State of current affairs:

R side skins all riveted into place, minus aft bottom edge and lower fwd section

Main area of concentration for R side skins

R side forward fuse area

Exciting times! Looking ahead in the plans, this appears to be the last "marathon" section for a little while, looking forward to some page-turning hopefully in the near future!

Fuse Side Skins

The riveting of the side skins continues through today! Not only are there a metric crap-ton of rivets in this section, but many of these rivets are extremely difficult to reach from the inside. I did as many as I could by myself before recruiting Sarah for the task of climbing into the airplane and bucking the ones I absolutely could not reach myself. Laying down flat on her stomach over the front seat area and riveting the lower fwd fuselage channels, we realized hearing protection was not optional here. We had the idea to grab our David Clark headsets and a portable intercom system I had so we could have hearing protection and talk to each other. It's nerdy as hell, but it worked amazingly!

Sarah's workstation inside the plane (right) and my workstation under the front side of the plane (left), connected by headsets and an intercom!

It was pretty hot today (got up into the 90's) and even with two fans going full-blast we took a number of breaks to cool off, rehydrate and stretch out. By the time we called it a night though, we had basically finished riveting the left side of the fuselage! The right side still needs to be done, except for the rivets we had done yesterday around the center section bulkhead. That's a task for another day!

Fuse Side Skins

There are a few countersinks that still need to be made on the sides of the fuselage structure, particularly around the center section bulkheads where the wing attach bolts go. In order to gain access to these areas, the bolts holding the two center sections together must be removed, and this makes me a bit nervous to remove them all at the same time (I'm trying to minimize the number of times I tighten and loosen these bolts, since they are a close-fit tolerance and I don't want to wear anything out more than I have to). Looking ahead in this section (29-21 step 1), I see that we will soon be final-installing the landing gear mounts, and with that step there will be four spacers bolted between the center sections and holding them together. I had the idea to make these spacers now, and temporarily bolt them into place, which ought to hold everything in the proper orientation even with the main attach bolts removed.

Looking at the dimensions for these spacers, I realized this was going to be a bit time consuming and require quite a fair amount of precision. The plans call for AT6-058x5/16 aluminum tubing, which they provide approximately 9" of in the kit. From this tube, I'll need to make four spacers, each 1-11/16" long, with a tolerance of -0" and +1/64"... that's a VERY narrow acceptable range within about 15 thousandths of an inch, between 1.6875" - 1.7031"!

I carefully cut four slightly oversize pieces (1-3/4") using the bandsaw, and then sat down with the belt sander and dial caliper to gently sand away the excess until I had four very close-tolerance spacers:

Measuring the length of the F-1082 Spacers

All four spacers fabricated and labeled with length, all within 0.002"... not bad!

Once the spacers were made, I bolted them into place using the super-long AN3-41A bolts along with a nut and four washers to account for the missing landing gear mount.

Spacers temporarily installed between the center section bulkheads

Once this was done, I removed the nuts from the main wing attach bolts and was free to slide them from side to side in order to get in there with a countersink. Unfortunately, the microstop is too big to fit near the bulkheads here, so the inner-most rows need to be countersunk freehand. No huge deal there, but it's more time consuming and it's hard to get the same consistency we've come to expect using the microstop. In time though, all of the hard-to-reach countersinks were complete, and after a quick double-check session ensuring all the understructure was ready, we could start attaching the skins!

After clecoing the skins into place, the plans have you start at the double row in the middle, where the skins meet and work outward from there. I did this, as well as the rows on the forward and aft sides of the center section, allowing me to re-attach the wing bolts, hopefully for good now until much later on in the build.

Just a few rivets in this area!

Some of the rivets along the sides were quite difficult to get to with a bucking bar (I can't imagine how a person could do it at all without these nifty tungsten bars) but patience and contortionism prevailed. By this time, we had to run to a mid-day family event and didn't return until later, when my friend Roy stopped over with his father, sister and her husband for dinner and to see the project. His father (also named Roy) was quite the handyman back in the day, and when he visited last year I had shown him how to buck a rivet using scrap material. He did such a great job then, I thought this time, why not have him set a rivet on the plane itself?

Roy Jr. (father of Roy III) setting a rivet in the fuselage side skin... he did an excellent job!

He did the first one so well we had him set another!

It was really cool to see him step up to the physical challenge of holding both the gun and bucking bar straight and set the rivet properly. There are adults 1/4 his age who struggle with that kind of precision! Excellent job Roy... you're welcome back anytime!

Return from OSH - Fuse Side Skins

One word sums up our experience last week at AirVenture 2015... wow! We had an absolute blast, from our early arrival Friday 7/17 to our departure on Sunday 7/26 the trip was filled with non-stop adventure and memory-making. Aside from two storms bracketing in our arrival and departure, the weather was literally PERFECT the entire rest of the week! I'll be starting a new section on this website for trip write-ups, and will post many more photos and stories there in the coming weeks. For now, I'll share a photo taken shortly after our return with a quick story:

Back from AirVenture 2015 with some new swag!

Among a few other events, we attended Van's official RV builder's dinner banquet on Tuesday night, which was attended by around 400 people and included a raffle drawing of maybe a dozen or so prizes ranging from t-shirts to tools to gift certificates. Neither Sarah nor I are typically too prone to win prizes at these kinds of events, but as luck would have it we both won something. Sarah won a Van's t-shirt and I won a Cleaveland 3/32" dimple die set... Yay! Both are pictured above. Our sincerest thanks go out to Van and crew, and Cleaveland Tool as well for the gifts... they will be put to good use, we promise!

Anyway, with all the excitement from Oshkosh winding down, bags unpacked, and things settling back into the normal groove it was time to pick up building where we left off. We had a relatively short night in the shop tonight but seemed to get a good amount done. We finished riveting all four fuselage side channels to the firewall and forward bulkheads, and attached the forward fuse longerons to the firewall gusset as well.

Mike riveting the F-1013-L longeron to the F-1001J-L gusset... happy to be back to building!

Sarah also stepped up to the plate with a bold move as well tonight... as anyone who reads this blog knows, I am so fortunate to have "SOS" with this build (significant other support). She is out here in the shop with me quite often and does an excellent job with anything from drilling to deburring to riveting to prosealing. However, she's always been reluctant to read directly from the plans and actually do a part of the build herself without my direct involvement/supervision/etc for fear of messing something up. All charged up from a week at Oshkosh, however, that changed tonight. While I was on a one-man-task pounding some rivets she asked, "What can I do?" and in short order she was reading from page 29-19 and fetching some parts from the shelf to start fabricating the rear vent brackets all on her own. Most of that can be done in parallel as a separate task while I finish some of the one-person tasks with the side skins... Awesome!

Aside from that, the next step is to begin attaching the skins themselves, but before we can do that we'll need to finish countersinking a few of those hard-to-reach holes around the spars. It's only maybe 6 or 7 holes (out of several hundred) left to do, but they will take some time and it sounded like a good stopping point for tonight.

"Fifi" the B-29 is in town at KCID this week and over the weekend, and although we already just spent some quality time with her at Oshkosh, we may be spending a bit more time with her through our local EAA chapter helping the CAF with logistics and security-type tasks over the weekend. If we're not out there doing that, we'll be in the garage working on the RV!

Fuse Side Skins - Departure for OSH

Not much time to build or update the blog this week... it's been busy with work and getting packed and ready for the greatest week of the year! :-)

On Tuesday I did get some priming done over the lunch hour and started riveting the back seat bracing together. I'm not riveting the mid-fuse longerons into place just yet, in fact I may hold off until tailcone attachment if possible. It seems it may be easier to rivet the whole piece in at once rather than have it half-installed for a few months while we get to that stage.

Other than that, the only noteworthy progress was on Wednesday when I started riveting the forward fuse channels on the upper and lower sides. A few of the rivets are pretty tricky to get to and clumsy for one person to rivet and buck, so this may need to wait until after AirVenture to get any further.

Speaking of AirVenture... the time has come! Looking at the forecast, we're thinking it may be a better idea to try and sneak into the N40 tomorrow (Friday) rather than risk being grounded for weather on Saturday. We're hoping to get a good spot near the west bathrooms! Wherever we end up though, I'm sure it will be a great week regardless.

If you're planning on being at OSH15, we hope you'll find us and say hello at any of the Van's social events that are occurring throughout the week, particularly Sun-Tue (RV-10 dinner, RV social, Van's banquet, respectively)! As a sign-off for the week and tribute to AirVenture, I'm sharing a poem I just wrote, shamelessly stealing the theme and several verses from a similar poem I saw on VAF (Credit: Bill Greenley). Cheers, fly safe, and enjoy!

A Visit To Oshkosh

'Twas the night before Oshkosh, up reading the blogs

We could all feel the excitement-- even the dogs

Making a list, and checking it twice

All the stuff that we'll need to camp for eight days and nights

The charts were laid out and a yellow line drawn

With checkpoints from home base straight to Ripon

That's where it begins, now you must fly precise

I know this for sure, I read the whole NOTAM twice

From there we'll find the tracks and continue toward Fisk

Single file, ninety knots they say, to lessen the risk

We'll listen to controllers call out plane after plane

Telling us how to proceed, now that we're in their domain

"Rock your wings to acknowledge," they say with some haste

Making sure all the airplanes stay evenly spaced

Continue up the tracks, or turn right towards the east

It doesn't matter to me, just so we get there in one piece

Turning base in the pattern now, it looks like we're high

On path to land long, on that dot colored with dye

It's hard to stay focused, I hear someone take pics

Of a mustang holding short, and on final a T-6

I see thousands of people standing there at the fence

To know my landing's being judged is making me rather tense

Passing over the dot I hear tires go squeak-squeak

Heading for the grass, we're now home for the week

Taxi to parking, call "mixture, master then mags"

A volunteer in orange stops by as we start unloading our bags

Whisked over to the booth where we get bands for our wrist

Registration and info, and any way they can assist

On the way back to our site, registration in hand

We see more and more airplanes coming in here to land

Spots filling up quickly with planes big and planes small

Some eighty years old, and some built last fall

With excitement we cry "look, an RV!" as an airplane comes near us

But then we look closer and say with dismay, "it's only a Cirrus"

A Trimotor takes off with a great sound of thunder

Where else in the world can you see this kind of wonder?

With our bags unloaded and the plane tied down tight

We put up our tent and bed down for the night

Dreaming of forums and workshops, maybe meeting Bob Hoover

Or flying a simulator to try out that new maneuver

Here’s to the day and night airshows, and friends having a ball

Wishing for fair skies all week, and a "Happy AirVenture" to all!

Fuse Side Skins

Relatively easy night in the factory today. Derek came over for another round of building, and we were quick to put him to work countersinking the fuselage side structure, including the center section side plates and the forward and aft side channels. It was his first experience countersinking with a microstop, and just like last week he proved to be an instant learner and did an excellent job in short order! Thanks again Derek! :-)

Meanwhile, it was Sarah's turn to supervise while I got to work finishing the dimples in the F-1015A ribs discussed in yesterday's post (there was still a small handful that needed to be done). After that, I deburred and dimpled the parts of the substructure that needed it, including the powdercoated steel brackets on the firewall. I did end up breaking a blade on my EZ-Burr (first one so far), but in hindsight I know what I did to cause it. Swapped out the blade and we were back in business.

Last thing we did tonight was trim off a bit of aluminum from the flanges on each side of the firewall. For future builders, it might be easier/prettier if you just trim the flanges during firewall construction. These are parts F-1001M (L) and F-1001D (R), and the idea is to remove enough material from the top and bottom of the flange to allow access for drilling/deburring/riveting the holes you'll be putting into the WD-1002/1003 brackets. I'd guess that a 60-degree angle should be about right (in other words, cut away *more* material than a 45-degree angle). Refer to 29-14 Step 3 and associated diagrams for more info.

That was pretty much it for tonight, no pics unfortunately but we're getting super close to a priming session... possibly tomorrow, we'll see!

Fuse Side Skins

***GOTCHA ALERT*** - This post contains a few items that confused me and required careful read-ahead in the plans, as well as one particularly nasty "gotcha" that appears to have tripped up more than one builder, including myself. The latter is also mentioned in the last entry on Tim Olson's site under "Fuse Tips" (as well as a few other build blogs) but I never saw them until it was too late.

Continued with the deburring tasks today, this time starting with the four Fwd- and Mid-Fuse R/L skins. It took about 4-5 hours to complete all four pieces, which involved tasks including deburring, edge-finishing, scuffing, and dimpling. Then it was time to see what was left to do. I've divided the finish-work into three categories: (1) loose metal parts, (2) skins, and (3) partially-riveted parts already installed in the fuselage structure. At this point, #2 is done and #1 is almost done except for countersinking and a small number of parts to dimple. Then, the focus will shift back to the fuselage for #3, for parts such as the bulkheads and center section side plate that need to be countersunk. I have to admit, countersinking is one of my less-favorite tasks, especially when there is so much of it do to. I guess I don't really *hate* it, but it does make a giant mess of shavings and doing the same thing eleventy-billion times gets a bit tedious.

For the longerons and fuse channels, I set up the microstop and #40 countersink on the drill press and went to town. I had to clamp a 2x4 to the drill press table for the longerons to glide over so that they could be fed through in the proper orientation:

The longeron countersinking process

Otherwise it actually went pretty well, and after a while I had a neat stack of countersunk metal parts, and a pile of metal shavings reminiscent of the pistachio shell scene in The Naked Gun.

One last thing I did before focusing back on the fuselage structure itself was to attempt to solve two mysteries I had running in the back of my mind (little did I know I was about to uncover a third mystery, too).

The first was what to do with the five 3/32" holes directly above the step in the side skin:

The 5 mystery holes above the step in the F-1070 side skin

The plans make no mention of what these holes are for, and there are no drill/dimple/rivet callouts, and no parts attach here at this stage in the plans. I had to dig pretty deep into the plans to discover that the F-1023B-L/R Baggage Floor Angles will attach here as shown in Section 33-2 Step 8 (and Fig. 4). That step mentions that these pieces need to be dimpled, presumably to match the side skins. One problem, the side skins had never been drilled or dimpled here yet! If I hadn't become curious, these holes would have remained untouched and I would have probably ended up in trouble later on. So, I clecoed these F-1023B angles to the skins, match-drilled, deburred, and dimpled them so that things go well in section 33. If you ask me, the steps between these processes should be presented/ordered a bit differently, and there is no reason I can think of that they shouldn't have you take care of this now. Dodged a bullet here for sure.

The second mystery I wanted to solve was the three nutplate holes along the upper flange of each of the F-1040 fuselage channels. The plans make no mention about installing nutplates here (or at least I couldn't find anything), but all the way in Section 35-7 Figure 2 they reveal what they are used for-- retaining the F-1042G wire cover. Looks like they specify a #8 screw, so I'll have to final-drill the nutplate holes #40 and #19, and countersink the #40 holes flush, and then install K-1000-08 nutplates into place. This is just another example of "missing" detail in the plans that I guess they just expect you to know to do it. This could all be done later, except one #40 hole for the aft-most nutplate is awfully close to a gusset attach point, and I think it would be pretty tricky getting a countersink in there at a later time. Better to do it now, I think. (EDIT: This turned out to be a "known" gotcha originally submitted by Chris Johnston and can be found on Tim Olson's GOTCHA page here... glad we ended up at the same conclusion!)

With all that behind us, we put the fuselage structure back into center stage and began countersinking the center section side plates. Before too long, I discovered another issue, this one being a real doozy. The F-1015A Outboard Seat Rib:

The F-1015A-L Outboard Seat Rib

I just talked with a friend and fellow builder Jon, who's building an RV-10 of his own and is pretty much at the exact same stage as we are, to double-check on something. A subsequent google search revealed that Jon and I appear to be the latest two victims of a nasty oversight in the plans. The #40 holes in the outboard face (or "web") of these ribs need to be dimpled. The plans *do* say to do this for the F-1018 ribs, which are part of the next section to the rear (partially visible at the right edge of the photo above). They make zero mention of doing this to the F-1015A ribs, however.

Additionally, there are some #30 holes that get match-drilled from the side skins into the F-1018 ribs, and the three aft-most of these holes need to be dimpled for a CS4-4 rivet according to Page 29-15 Figure 1. It would probably be best to do that match-drilling now in order to get the dimpling out of the way, because it will be very difficult later on.

In summary, here's what I believe really should happen during Section 26-5, somewhere between steps 1-6:

• For the F-1015A-L/R ribs, dimple all of the #40 holes in the web of the piece, excluding the forward-most row that tucks behind the F-1004D bulkhead. Leave the #30 holes alone (careful, they crisscross!)
• Dimple the flanges of the F-1015B-L/R Intercostals to match the dimples you made in the previous step.
• When completing Step 6 on 26-5, the dimple callouts for the #40 holes in the F-1018-L/R are correct; however you should *also* dimple the three aft-most #30 holes that can be seen on the right side of the photo above. Are those holes not there yet? You'll want to fetch the fuse side skins and cleco this rib into place, and match-drill those #30 holes, then deburr and dimple the rib. Trust me, way easier to do now than when everything's all riveted together. As a final clarification on the #30 holes, none should be dimpled EXCEPT for these three. Refer to callouts on Page 29-15 Figure 1.

(Disclaimer: since these recommendations deviate from the order of events in the plans, please don't hold me responsible if they cause more harm than good... I'm only trying to help!)

In order to dimple these holes now, I took a small piece of steel plate and drilled a 3/16" hole near the corner, to fit a female dimple die. Using my rivet gun and die attachment with male dimple die, I carefully created dimples in each location. The dimples aren't the prettiest, but they should be perfectly adequate for the substructure here and I think we're out of the woods now with this particular gotcha... Whew!

Next on the agenda: Finish countersinking and dimpling the fuselage structure for the side skins, and prime all the loose parts and skins. Oshkosh officially kicks off in one week (although we'll be there even sooner than that)... yay!

Fuse Side Skins

Started off this morning finishing up all the drilling tasks of the forward fuselage side skins, including match-drilling the longerons and upper/lower fuse channels. Drilling into the outboard face of the channels was pretty simple, but match-drilling the upper and lower flanges to the "three-fingered" firewall brackets proved to be a little tricky. The "fingers" on these brackets not only need to be held tight against the channel, but also need to be pulled in an outboard direction so that they nest further inside the channel, otherwise the holes you drill will just barely hit the edge of the part. I ended  up using two C-clamps, one in the X-axis and one in the Y-axis to get all the flanges oriented properly before drilling. Once one or two holes were made and clecoes could be put in place, it wasn't nearly as tough.

Anyway, once all the final- and match-drilling was complete, the whole structure that had been slowly clecoed together over the last several days could now come apart for deburring, dimpling, countersinking, scuffing, and priming.

Most (but not all) of the substructure for the Fuse Side Skins

We got through deburring all of the substructure parts and ended up calling it a night. There are a lot of parts both big and small, and the deburring task takes a considerable amount of time. We'll get through it all though I'm sure... hopefully tomorrow!

Fuse Side Skins

Today we are celebrating two things: (1) the wing kit was delivered one year ago today; and (2) it's Sarah's birthday (probably best to order this the other way around)! Even with the number of setbacks we faced last year with storm damage to the house and a number of other distractions and time-sucks, I feel like we've really made some great progress on the airplane and it's coming together very nicely.

Today was another (and probably the last for a little while) light day for work, which means it was a heavy day in the factory. I picked up where we left off last night working on the mid fuse side skins, match- and final-drilling the skins to the underlying structure. There are quite a few holes to drill, and many of the "lines" to follow aren't very straight or have confusing overlaps. To assist in making sure I didn't miss any holes, I started circling completed areas with a green Sharpie (I also marked "do not drill" holes with a blue Sharpie). After a couple hours, both mid fuse side skins were attached and drilled:

L Mid Fuse Side Skin after match-drilling

R Mid Fuse Side Skin after match-drilling

Turning the page to the next step (29-10), I had to pause and giggle a bit. I was looking forward to reaching this step, because when we had initially received the fuselage a couple months ago I was paging through the plans and stumbled across this page. The plans are typically pretty matter-of-fact and dry of any humor or casual commentary, as one might expect them to be. However, it appears that by the time you get to this part of the build process, Van's rewards you with just a bit of silliness:

Section 29-10, Step 1

The humor is definitely groan-worthy at best, but even so references to a Metric Crescent Wrench and a Sweaty Grunting Human are a welcome relief in an otherwise long and arduous process. The step itself is indeed kind of a pain, and really did end up doing some grunting and sweating... bending structural aluminum takes some elbow grease!

Me and my Metric Crescent Wrench, putting a twist into the F-1041-L

Once all four fuse channels were twisted into their correct orientations, it was time to modify the wooden clamping block we used on the mid fuse skins to work with the fwd fuse skins by routing out a 1/8" radius on the clamping edge and cutting a different angle along the side. Unfortunately I forgot to snap a photo of it, but other than using a differently-contoured clamp it's basically the same process as what was done for the mid skins. Once they were both done, the assembly could start being clecoed together, introducing a small handful of new parts including some that had been set aside in earlier sections. The resulting product was certainly photo-worthy!

The fuselage (L side) with side skins clecoed into place

The fuselage (R side) with side skins clecoed into place

Close-up of F-1069-R Fwd Side Skin

Starting to look more and more like a cockpit!

Inside the cabin, R fwd area

Pretty awesome! With all this clecoed together it looks like a giant "canoe" of sorts, although I'd imagine it probably wouldn't float all that well. That made for a pretty good stopping point, I think the next steps are going to be more drilling in the forward fuse area, followed by the always-disappointing tasks of deburring, deburring, and deburring.

Probably not going to be a ton more progress over the next couple of days due to some other things that need to get taken care of, and some longer days with work ahead... but stay tuned!