RivetBangers.com

These things are hewn out of some pretty heavy angle stock.
Spent 2 nights sawing, grinding, filing these things to perfection.
It is hard to make swift progress if you are burning your fingers.
This stuff heats up quick during any cutting and grinding.

I clamp it inside the F-705 top channel, then start match drilling it to the
various holes on the front and top.
Oops. Forgot to cleco those bulkhead side channels underneath there
before I drilled the top. Now I've got some misaligned holes on the top.

Crap! I'm going to have to re-make these suckers and order some more
angle stock from Van's. $10 for a foot, so not too expensive.

Just had to get that off my chest.... I'm already feeling better.

Thanks for the heads up, those are on my to do list for tomorrow!

I have found that an ordinary pair of garden gloves... the rubber-dipped ones you find at Home Depot or Lowes, are great for keeping the heat away from your skin while you work on these parts. They have a good grip, too. And if you bump your finger into the scotchbrite wheel, it's better to lose a little rubber than some skin. Ask me how I know.

Yes, I have a pair of those here in the garage. I got tired of doing the disposable latex gloves just to move parts around after prep and before priming. Good tip!

So I got new parts fabricated this afternoon in about 1/3 the time. Match drilled this time with the correct parts in place. On to the rest of the bulkheads.

I ended up cutting some big notches in the side of the angle where the side and top skins get riveted to the longeron. This will allow me to hopefully get in there and buck solid rivets when the time comes to get the top skin on. Without these notches the clearance for even getting a pull rivet in there would be tough. I wanted to go ahead and get these permanently installed so I can get the canopy frame brackets installed.

One other puzzle was that I had drilled #40 holes for the 2 flush rivets that sit underneath the canopy frame brackets. These are the right-most 2 empty holes on the longeron in the above picture, and the corresponding 2 holes between the notches on the angle. I couldn't find any AN426AD3-10's. I finally ended up looking on the Fuselage Hardware List to see if any were any in the kit (there isn't). All I could find that were long enough were AN426AD4-11's. A look back on the plans DWG 25 confirmed these were actually supposed to be AD4's. While looking over the HW list of BAG 1990-1 there was a note next to the AN426AD4-11's that these were to be cut to -10's. Weird place to put that note! It should be noted on the plans, but isn't. I drilled out the existing holes to #30, re-countersunk and used my rivet cutter to create some -10's.


Canopy frame brackets installed. You can also see the tiny notch you need to make on the seat back brace to clear the bracket.

bruceh wrote:
All I could find that were long enough were AN426AD4-11's. A look back on the plans DWG 25 confirmed these were actually supposed to be AD4's. While looking over the HW list of BAG 1990-1 there was a note next to the AN426AD4-11's that these were to be cut to -10's. Weird place to put that note! It should be noted on the plans, but isn't. I drilled out the existing holes to #30, re-countersunk and used my rivet cutter to create some -10's.

Sounds like they were out of the 4-10 grip length rivet, and instead of back ordering the rivets they just put something a little longer in the kit and make an individual note for you to trim to the correct length.

bruceh wrote:

That's a GREAT little mod to that piece Bruce!! Wish I had thought of that. I used pulled rivets there, and it was REALLY tight...

Nice work!

Bruce,

I shot and bucked the rivets from the skin to the longeron, then installed the F-705G. This caused me to delay installing the F-705G for a while, but I have all solid rivets in there!