DATE: 12-04-2024 TIME: 09:56 – 16:50 ~ 8:00
Continuing the assembly of the Vans RV-10 tailcone today consisted mainly of finishing the riveting of the side skins F-1073 and the bottom skin, putting some rivets in the F-1011, F-1055 left and right and the F-1012. This would be tough to do on your own without a bunch of screwups which is why I waited until EJ was available. It is practically impossible I think to rivet the bottom on your own.
I noticed that the vinyl on the right side of the tailcone was getting scratched so I had to check my “saw horses” and found one of the screws was proud of the wood and I could not get it to bite down further so I used some of my rubber drawer liner and used spray on glue to attach it to the top of the saw horse.
You will notice in some of the snapshots that we used the long bucking bar from Cleveland that is actually shaped for bucking inside spars at an angle. Using the end of the bar instead of the angled face pressed up against the rivet across the tailcone laid on its side made it a lot easier to buck.
There are a number of holes that should not be riveted during this process so, apart from marking the holes, I tried to make a habit of leaving clecos in the those holes. This isn’t necessarily fool proof as you need to have other clecos in place to keep the parts together.
The only step from page 10-21 not completed here is step 5 which I left to the next session.
