Section 13: Main Spar- 5 hrs 26 mins (Main Spar 30:17, Wings 34:30, Empennage 266:39, Total 321:07)
Rivet count: 20* (Total 5,767)Lucky Chapter 13 is complete!! The numbers from my build log tracker tell me I worked 11 sessions averaging 2:45. Not too bad. It took about 7 weeks of actual building to do that. Now for the bad news. Unfortunately there was a two year break in the middle as discussed previously. So in reality, I averaged about 16 mins per week, or 2.5 minutes per calendar day. OK, now that I have entertained myself sufficiently...
The day started off well enough. I set up the spars for self-etching primer along the flanges (pic 1). I had been delaying that for a few days since it had been raining and humid, and I needed a well-ventilated garage. While I waited for the one side to dry before flipping over the other flange, I took care of some admin by annotating the parts I had "pulled" off of my inventory sheet. In the process of doing so, I realized I had not updated the empennage kit inventory the entire year I was in Mississippi. Good thing I had some time on my hands for that. After I flipped the spars and primed the other side and all the dings the main spar got in random spots, I started looking ahead to the next section for the wing ribs and I pulled those parts from inventory.
The primer will take 24 hours to fully set, but can be touched and handled after about 1 hour. All that remained was to rivet the AEX tie downs to the spars and prep the 823PP brackets and bolt them to the spars/AEX tie downs. I was on my last bolt for the night, and I have no clue what got into me, but I completely spaced on how tight I was turning the wrench and ended up collapsing one of the platenuts and shearing it (pic 3). Of course it happened on the last bolt!
So I removed the rest of the bolts, but the over-torqued one would not come out. After thirty minutes of trying everything I could think of, I busted out the #40 drill and went to work on the plate nut and the bolt together. I drilled through, rotated the bolt a 1/8 turn, and drilled again. I essentially cut the bolt in two with a drillbit. Not pretty by any means. Then I continued use of the drill by drilling out the ten rivets holding the AEX to the spar, so I could access the two rivets holding the now-split plate nut (pic 4). Then I re-riveted the plate nut to the AEX, and the AEX to the spar. So 32 rivets today, but only 20 of them count.
Mercifully, the second time around went better than the first, and after some bolt markings, chapter 13 is in the books (pic 2). I only have four days left of building before I have to take a two-month break for work, so I will work ahead with the ribs, and skip over anywhere that directs priming until January when I can order a fresh batch of AkZO. I don't expect to get very far this week, and I will likely spend most of my time fluting the ribs and deburring edges to be honest. So stay tuned for more updates! -M
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