Since the AKZO had plenty of time to harden, I decided to go ahead and rivet the stiffeners to their skins so I can continue on with the build process. Since these are backriveted on, this was a very quick little build session, which was nice because I have TONS of other stuff to get done tonight….not airplane related.

I started out by inspecting all the stiffeners and skins to make sure I had done a decent job priming them. There’s a few thick spots and a few thin spots but since this is just primer on the internal parts I am not worried about it. It’ll do its job of preventing corrosion. I setup my rivet gun with the backrivet set, dug out the backrivet plate and setup the benches. As the drawings call for, I used AN426AD3-3.5 rivets, stuck them in the holes for the stiffeners and then used some riveters tape to help hold them in place while I back rivet.

You can see on the right side of the back rivet plate, a piece of wood. It’s almost the same thickness as the plate, so I use it to hold the skin level to make sure the stiffeners get set squarely against the skin. Then I placed a stiffener over the rivets and held it down with my fingers as I backriveted it to the skin. I like to set the rivet in the middle, then work my way out to the edge of the skin. Then I go back and set the rivets from the middle, working towards the bend in the skin. This way my stiffener is well attached and won’t get mis-aligned when I push the skin back to get the rivet gun in that space near the bend.

I simply worked my way along each stiffener this way, and then worked from the inboard end of the aileron to the outboard riveting the stiffeners on. This process went pretty quickly, so I was done with each side of the skin in about 15 minutes or less. Eventually I had both ailerons done and it was time to call it a night for this quick session.

I’ll work on bending them to their final shape tomorrow, I’ve got to dig out my bending brake I made for the empennage kit 🙂 Here’s all the photos from tonight:

Google Photos Link: https://photos.app.goo.gl/2ExONxvwMkvCttIl2

Hours Worked: 1

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