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Drill or No Drill

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wiseguy67

I'm New Here
Good day everyone. Looking for some clarification. I've heard that on the -14 there is no requirement to drill-out the pre-punched holes in the kit; that they come manufactured from Vans in the correct size. Is this the case?

Cheers,
John
 
There was a thread about this just a couple days ago-----------IIRC, smaller holes no drill------larger holes needed drilling.

Take a look around the thread should be pretty easy to find.
 
Clarification detail...

The RV-14 kit uses some RV-10 parts. Primarily the wing ribs, flap and aileron ribs, and a few parts in the empenage.
The P.P. holes in these specific parts will be slightly under sized and have to be final drilled. It is a rather small percentage of the holes in the entire airplane (I'd say less than 5%). The construction manual tells you which holes to final drill.
 
+1 on the reamer, another tip for those of us who still are making rookie mistakes:

Keep your drill straight when drilling new holes. Have run into a couple oblong holes of my own doing when trying to work too quickly. Nothing critical but frustrating. Example: Each leading edge rib has one hole on each side which is in the skin but not in the rib. You need to use the skin as a drill guide and create the hole in the rib underneath. Yet I ended up with this hole oblong because I wanted to get it done quickly and wasn't square. Oops rivet here we come ...

Other than that it is a timesaver not having to worry about the endless match drilling on the skins at least.
 
Last edited:
rvbuilder2002 said:
Clarification detail...

The RV-14 kit uses some RV-10 parts. Primarily the wing ribs, flap and aileron ribs, and a few parts in the empenage.
The P.P. holes in these specific parts will be slightly under sized and have to be final drilled. It is a rather small percentage of the holes in the entire airplane (I'd say less than 5%). The construction manual tells you which holes to final drill.
Click to expand...

So if the plans state not to final / match drill, they don't need to be deburred either?
 
Feel it or look at it with a 10x magnifier glass. If there's a burr, deburr it. Otherwise you don't need to.

Dave
 
I think the "buzz" on the 14 was that with the new modern cnc punching process, that most holes needed very little deburring. Sometimes its none, sometimes its just one side, sometimes its both because of drilling. Maybe that is what you are thinking of?

But make no mistake, there is match drilling and/or final drilling in the process.

If I were to guess on the wings, 80% final drilling (which is just a reamer) and 20% match drilling.
 
propsync said:
I think the "buzz" on the 14 was that with the new modern cnc punching process, that most holes needed very little deburring. Sometimes its none, sometimes its just one side, sometimes its both because of drilling. Maybe that is what you are thinking of?

But make no mistake, there is match drilling and/or final drilling in the process.

If I were to guess on the wings, 80% final drilling (which is just a reamer) and 20% match drilling.
Click to expand...

I think you are a bit off on your estimates Tom, but I guess it depends on how you count the holes.

Since all of the final drilling on the RV-14 is mostly done with parts unassembled I consider it by each individual hole in each part.
All of the holes in the skins are final size. I think most all of the (rivet) holes in the fwd and aft spars are also (but I might be remembering that incorrectly), so most of the final drilling is on RV-10 part numbered parts, which is primarily the wing, flap, and aileron ribs.
By definition (from the construction manual), match drilling is drilling a hole in a location where none yet exists, using a hole in another part as a pilot/locating hole. There is very little (if any) of this done on the RV-14 wings.
 
Bottom line; run your finger across the hole. If it feels at all rough, it needs to be deburred!
 
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