Quality Check

So, here's my concern...

How far do you take the "building an airplane not a spaceship" motto?

I'll admit, I'm new to the game, just about done with my HS, and have not driven every rivet perfectly. I've only had to drill out one, but I've got a few that have a slightly angled shophead...mainly due to the squeezer not being perfectly square when I pull the trigger. The diameter gauge checks okay, the "average" shop-head height also checks okay. I'm talking about 1 in every 20 rivets along the rear spar.

So, I realize this is a learning experience, but eventually, I'm going to strap myself into this thing and leave Terra Firma. I also believe there is a lot of redundancy inherant in the design. I decided before I started to build a flyer, not a show piece, but I'm starting to wonder how far I can take that motto before it's just an excuse to be sloppy/a rationalization of poor work? At the same time, I can't start losing sleep over the first 200 rivets or I'll never finish, or worse, give up and bail on the whole thing. A lot of little mistakes eventually add up though, right?

Am I just being a wimpy newbie?

Tahnks for the advice

I am a firm believer that a "bad" rivet is easy to spot. IMHO, a slightly angled shop head is nothing to lose sleep over. I cannot imagine that an angle causes any loss of strength, as long as the head width and height are correct. I noticed some not-so-perfect big rivets on the wing spar from Van's. There are a couple sections along the thick stiffener bars that the shop head isn't as thick as my rivet checker tool says it should be. They are all the right width, though. And I'm not going to concern myself even with those oh-so-critcal rivets.

The one thing that I've heard other builders say is to go carefully inspect a certified plane sometime. There are some interesting looking rivets you can find!

jferraro16 said:

So, here's my concern..........
How far do you take the "building an airplane not a spaceship" motto?
I'm starting to wonder how far I can take that motto before it's just an excuse to be sloppy/a rationalization of poor work? .................. A lot of little mistakes eventually add up though, right?

Click to expand...

I think you display a healthy attitude. I've always been a bit uncomfortable with the notion that we are "just building an airplane". That sound bite may serve to cast a wider marketing net and lure more potential customers into securing a builders number, but we all walk a fine line here. RV's are as different as the people who build them. I've seen RV's that raise the bar of excellence way past my ability and I've seen RV's I wouldn't fly in. Certainly, the odd badly set rivet is not going to cause our airplanes to fall out of the sky. Nobody builds a perfect airplane but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. Judgement and discipline serve the homebuilder well. Everybody shoots a bad rivet. I shot rivets professionally for many, many years and I can assure you it is the exceptionally rare person who can shoot a couple hundred rivets during a work session and not have at least one or two that needs replacing. That's why a Quality Assurance department oversees every thing you do in the manufacturing environment, and they exist to keep you honest. My work experiences served me well everytime I fought that inner battle when deciding if a given rivet would really pass critical inspection. In the end, I always knew what the answer would be. Be critical with yourself and don't just settle. Go ahead and replace that bad rivet. Sure, no doubt it sometimes IS a royal pain in the arse but it is not that big a deal. Really. Let other people "settle". Build your RV the best way you know how. You can be sure of one thing.....it won't be perfect, but at least you reached.

Rick Galati RV-6A "Darla"

A mental balance

Man, I hear you, I have worried myself to sleep over some piece of my ship, then awakened to tear it apart again....

The event that helped me the most was my first visit from my EAA Technical Advisor. I was as nervous as a school boy in the principal's office when he arrived. He looked over my tail kit, smiling all the time and kept saying that I was doing fine. He had his mirror and flashlight out. I would point to this rivet, this smile, this ding on the spar. He smiled and said to relax. He then told me tales of certificated planes he'd inspected that had many rivets missing, tipped rivets, badly dinged up spars, that had gone unnoticed for decades of flight and inspections.

I trust him because he retired after 35 years at Wright Patterson AFB as a civilian 'Forensic Airframe Engineer'. He has a degree in mechanical engineering and his job as a contractor to the air force was to analyze USAF wrecks for structural failure.

I showed him places where my bucking bar was not perfectly aligned when I riveted a rib to a spar, and he'd say something like,
"Well, sometimes a designer puts things into a plane that are really tight, and we just do the best we can." He also said that Van's kits use so many rivets that you could probably leave 1/3 of them out and it would still be strong enough for the simple reason that homebuilts will be built by people of varying ability. This keeps the design safe. Not that anyone would do it, (leave out rivets) but it was his way of telling me to relax.

I guess what I'm saying is if you're really in doubt, have a few EAA people over, or seek a Technical Advisor and invite him/her over.

I still worry myself to sleep and re-do something the next day, but I've come a long way since the tail. Hang in there, trust yourself and keep going. Less-than-perfect rivet in 20 is chicken feed. Keep hittin 'em.

Art