Started off where we left last time which is the remaining rivets on the foward bottom skin.
In the previous article I mentioned the 4 rivets in the intersection of the floor stiffeners and the countersinked F-704 and center bottom skin holes. I forgot to dimple those holes on the forward bottom skin and now it pretty much too late.
Scratched my head for a while and finally got some success on using the male die on my c-frame hit-bar.
What I did was first attempt to dimple them with the 3/32 pop dimpler. That didn't work out well but it got the initial indent on the material to hit it withe the mallet.
Once the indent was there, I mounted the male die on the c-frame rod and asked Cindy to hold a bucking bar on the inside (just to have some resitance to the material).
Then gently tapped it a couple of times and that formed the dimple in the countersink. It's not completly perfect but the quality is good enough to set the rivets. Shot those and only on one of them, the manufactured head doesn't sit flush with the skin. May have to shave this off a bit before painting but not worrying about it too much.
Then we did the second row behind the firewall which attached the bottom skin to the firewall F-601M stiffener angle. Most of those went in without a problem.
The first row is not rivetted yet as the cowling hinges will be rivetted there later on.
4 rivets are really problematic. I didn't set them yet as I didn't find a way to handle them.
The rivets just on the bottom of the F-601J L and R angle are impossible to set. Either I shouldn't have set the bottom rivets holding the F-601J angle yet, or the holes are too much centered on the F601M but either way, I can't get to set them correctly. I did an attempt on on e and the result looks like in the picture below. The head sets ok in the beginning but as soon as it expands, the bucking bar can't reach in far enough and I mal-forms the head.
Will have to drill this back out. I could probably set them if I drill out the three bottom rivets on the F-601J angle and then set them again later. But I don't want to be that drastical just yet and asked Vans for their opinion on this one.
same problem left side.
For the rest, overall good looking shop heads and another task off the list.
As we had some time left, I also set some rivets on the top of the tailcone. (as far as the squeezer can't reach). The rivets between rivets on the longeron and the top rivets on the bulkheads will be set using the pneumatic squeezer once I rolled the canoe.
There she is, almost no more clecoes to do on before we can roll it over and reach another milestone.
