This evening I was able to get my buddy Dave over again to help me finish up riveting the main wing spars. I have the same comments as I did from the last time we riveted the other spar. It’s A LOT of work bucking those 3/16-inch rivets!
Here’s a video we took to show you just how much fun it is driving and bucking these big rivets. This was taken while we were riveting those really long rivets at the root end of the spar. The rivets are AN470AD-6-22.
As part of the F1 mods, I needed to add some flush -6 rivets near the inboard end of the spar. As the F1 fuselage is wider than that of the RV-4, these double flush rivets are located on the spar in the area where the fuselage formers are spaced further apart, and as a result these double flush rivets provide clarance for the formers of the F-404 bulkhead.
Since these double flush rivets are part of the mod, I had to order some, and I could only get them (…i think) in a -24 length, where I needed -22. These rivets are really big suckers and in the picture below, you can see I needed to add a few spacers to my rivet cutter to be able to get these cut to the desired lenght.
In the picture below, we finished up riveting the big -6 rivets and now both spars are almost complete! I have just a bit more riveting to do another night to finished up the spar root area. So happy to have this job done. Soon I’ll be building the F-404 bulkhead.
Please comment. I love to hear from my readers. Thanks again for coming along for this ride, you make my work worthwhile.
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