Tips and Miscellaneous Stuff
Touching up the primer.
I
used a small airbrush kit to touch up some dings in the primer on the ribs,
spars and skins. I can mix up about 2 ounces of primer/adduct and it goes a long
way. Some plastic disposable pipettes work great for drawing a small amount of
paint and adduct from the gallon cans to transfer to the 2 ounce paint jar. The
airbrush gives you a very nice, small spray pattern for touching up those small
areas. Cleanup was also a breeze. I just filled the paint jar with an ounce of
MEK and shot it through the tip. Remember your safety equipment when
spraying these toxic paints!
Using rivet tape on skins.
Here
are some before and after pictures of some flush rivets on the HS skin. I was
having trouble with the mushroom set scuffing the skin while riveting the flush
rivets, mostly due to the set sliding on the skin. To solve this problem, I used
some rivet tape, the kind that came with the
Cleaveland Aircraft Tool
complete tool kit, and used it over the heads of the flush rivets. This
eliminated the problem as you can see from these photos. (Before - left, After -
right). This also allows you to set up 3-5 rivets at time to shoot.
Use a cordless drill for deburring the zillion holes.
I
finally purchased a Black and Decker cordless drill ($20 at Home Depot) to use
for deburring 3/32" and 1/8" holes in ribs, skins and spars. The handle adjusts
to 3 different positions, and I have used all 3 on various areas. I use
Cleaveland Aircraft Tools' 4" and 12" one hole deburring bits with it (as they
recommend). This little gem saved a ton of time on the Vertical Stabilizer. I
wish I had bought it before I started on the Horizontal Stabilizer.
Van's tip for drilling rudder stiffeners to skins.
I
followed Van's recommendation to cleco and drill through the skin into the bench
(in this case an old hollow wooden door clamped to the bench) when match
drilling the stiffeners to the skins. This allows the skin to lie flat on the
bench and holds the skin in place
Dipping "tank" for acid etching and alodining.
I
made a small tank to aid in acid etching and alodining some of the longer ribs,
spars and doublers. It makes it a little easier to keep from splashing the
solution all over the place. All parts came to about $20 and consisted of the
following: 5' - 4" pvc pipe, one 4" pipe cap, one 4" x 2" reducer, one 2" x 3/4"
adapter, one 3/4" plastic boiler drain. I glued the end fittings on BEFORE
cutting the pipe with a jig saw so that the glue joint would be tight.
Allowed glue to dry then cut out not quite half of the pipe then glued the
remaining fittings and screwed on the boiler drain. Works like a charm. You
could probably use 6" pipe if you wanted but the price for materials goes up
substantially.
Epoxy adhesive for various uses
This epoxy made by Loctite is Hysol E-120HP two part epoxy. The
claim to fame here is that this material has been used by NASA to attach nose
cones to rockets. The adhesive is sold in a two section tube. You have to
purchase the gun and tips in order to use it. The tip automatically mixes the
adhesive in proper proportion. This product comes in various curing times. The
120 signifies a 120 minute working time. It is also available in 20 and 60
minute working times. I acquired this product from
McMaster-Carr. Information
can be found on
Loctite's website.
ELT Mounting location under baggage floor
See
builders log entry on where I mounted my
Emergency Locator Transmitter.
