Tag Archives: RV-14

Section 14 – Top Skin

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Dad is in town and we’ve had a good couple of days working on the right wing. First we finished riveting the inboard top skin to the ribs and spar. The we dimpled the outboard top skin and riveted it as well. We estimate that we drove about 600 rivets over the past two days.
RV-14 Right Wing

Below you can see the J-Channel box stiffeners inserted in the ribs and riveted to the wing skin.
IMG 2557

Here is the outboard aileron bracket riveted to the outboard rib and aft spar.
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And here’s a time lapse video of our work today:

Section 15 – Outboard Leading Edge

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Now that I’ve got some workbench space again I started working on the leading edge. First step was to cut a couple of cradle V-blocks out of plywood to hold the leading edge skins while riveting.

Next it’s time to work on ribs again. So back to the same routine as earlier: drill holes to final size, debur both sides of the hole, debur the edges as well as the lightening holes, straighten the flanges so they’re 90 degrees to the rib web, then flute the rib flanges so the rib is straight. That took about 8 hours over Friday, and Saturday.
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I snuck out for a few hours on Easter Sunday and worked on polishing the nose portion of the ribs on the scothchbrite wheel so that the bent tabs are more rounded than faceted. Then I started dimpling. Here’s Ashley doing a bit of dimpling on the DRDT-2. More dimpling later.
IMG 2424

Re-arranging the workshop

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I think I’ve done all I can do riveting the wing skins on until Dad comes down in a few weeks to help with riveting. I thought it would be a good time to build a wing cradle and rearrange the garage a little bit. So I stole Tim Olson’s wing cradle design and spent the weekend building one.
IMG 2427

Next I rearranged the garage a little to put the cradle up against the wall and give a bit more workable workspace. I’ll probably need to put the workbenches back together again when Dad comes down to rivet top skins but I’ll deal with that then.
IMG 2431

Section 14 – Top Skin

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My friend Rick came over on Saturday and we got started riveting the inboard top skin on the right wing. We got 3 rows done.
RV-14 wing skin

After Rick left I finished with the wing root nutplates and clecoed the outboard skin to the wing for safe keeping. I think it will stay there until I get some more riveting help show up.