What's new
Van's Air Force

Don't miss anything! Register now for full access to the definitive RV support community.

I did not do this...

Van's does some dimpling for us on occasion. I for one welcome our new preemptively dimpling overlords.
 
I've noticed that dimpling has been done when it's an odd sized dimple die that the majority of builders won't have in their tool kits.

In the end I see this as a way of increasing the quality of the end product. Thanks Vans.
 
RV12's have quite a few pre dimpled bits and pieces - like you say, difficult places or strange material like firewall.
 
I had to make a special dimple die with a floating piece to sit on my no-hole yoke to do this recently on a replacement 7 part (~1.5 hrs), good to see how Vans is actually improving the kits.

You don't know what you are missing, having to pull your hair out to design and make a special tool on a lathe, TIG, grinder, etc to do a 5 second job. Never to use that tool again.

You know I was just thinking yesterday about the horrible, painful, time consuming little things that are really only a small % of the build, but take an ordinarily large % of the time are what they left for the builder on the 7. Really too bad they don't update the 7 to these standards. :eek:

Does that put perspective on how easy Vans made it for the 14 builders?
 
Last edited:
I won't complain at all if mine is the same, I will thank them too. I received the kit yesterday and have not got to this part yet.
 
On the -10 I had the same for the elevator counterweight ribs. They were pre- dimpled in spots, but also already fluted. I thought they were used returned parts so I requested new. They sent new by my request but they were the exact same, so I sent back.

What made me want new is they were WAY over-fluted. Second set was too. I just have some un-fluting to do...
 
Not a -14, but I was thinking the same thing looking at a rudder piece. I was wracking my brain trying to remember if I dimpled it or not, but realized that yeah, it was pre-dimpled. It would have been a pain to dimple (trailing edge rudder rib), so I welcomed it. Now if we could convince Van's to do more... :p
 
Back
Top