Wing Skins, part 1
Well I woke up this AM ready to tackle the wing skins. I’m ready to go back to bed now. The aren’t going as well as I hoped. My daughter and I got out to the garage pretty early, turned on the the heat, and started taping rivets down. We started having problems from the start. Mostly mis-communications that caused errors. Once we got those squared away we got on a roll for about 8 rivets. Then I screwed up 3 shop heads in a row. We hammered 2 more pretty well, then 2 more bad shop heads. The factory heads were fine, but the shops were not good. At this point I decided to stop. I was making too many mistakes.
The source of the problem is with this offset back rivet set.
Offset back rivet set
It is very difficult to control and requires a LOT of power to set the rivet. As an example, when I normally do back riveting with the smaller 4 or 5 inch set I have my air pressure set to 30lbs or so. This set, being so long and much heavier, requires about 80-90lbs. As a result it bucks around in your hand quite a bit and is very hard to keep on target. I might try again later, but I’m thinking that it may be easier to buck the rivets with a regular mushroom set and bucking bar and save this tool for the hard to reach spots.
The 'X' is not a mark of where to find treasure
