Fix + rivet left elevator 1 - 10/05/2011 - 2h

I realised on monday that while juggling around with the nutplates on the reinforcement plates of the right elevator, I rivetted them on the wrong side.

On monday, I took an hour to drill them out and rivet them back in place on the opposite side. No harm done, all rivets beautifully drilled without hole enlargement.
I had to do this with the gun and bucking bar but the quality of the shop heads is nearly as good as with the squeezer.

One negative point, because of the fact that I had to reopen the skin, I had to remove the two flush head rivets that connect the counterweight skin to the elevator skin. (the trick to avoid poprivets)
This means I will have to use the pop rivets to close these later on as called for on the plans. Unfortunatly it's on the top side. But there was no option, it had to be done that way or I couldn't squeeze the nutplates.

Today tuesday, i couldn't resist heading back into the shop to start setting some rivets on the left elevator.

I started cleco-ing the reinforcement plates and nutplates on the rear spar of the left elevator. This time paying attention on the good side. You know what they say about the donkey... never twice...

Squeezing went smooth. Drilled out one because I had the impression it got squeezed little too much to the right. My buddy Fred would call me crazy if he were there, but I re-set it anyway. Must be perfect.

Look at those shop heads, they don't get much better then that.

Now I'm off to Bremen for a couple of days for work so plane-work continuous on saturay.


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