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Boggered Hole

jswareiv

Well Known Member
I was back riveting the elevator skin E00900A and I think the last hole came off of the metal plate and really made a mess of it. All the rest are beautiful. Any suggestions on how I can fix this? Should I try and remove the other rivets to take off the rib E-1008A, then try to re-dimple the skin there?
29oo107.jpg
 
If the c-frame fits there I would try and take the avery dimple dies and redimple both pieces together. Then check with a rivet to see how it sits. If the hole is a little enlarged you can either use a NAS rivet or one trick I had seen is to take a slightly longer rivet and pre squeeze a little on the hand squeezer to fatten it up slightly. Then set as normal.

Hope that helps. Happy riveting!
 
That figures! Redimple and rivet. If it looks ugly, come painting time fill, prime and then paint. It probably will be one of a few more.
 
I probably wouldn't have too much luck dimpling two pieces together - just was not one of my acquired skills.

I can't tell how many rivets you'd have to remove from the photo, I don't know the skin thickness, and I'm not sure about the line up of the pieces (ie., edge distances, etc.) but if it were possible to use the removal procedure described in another thread (search RVBUILDER2002), I'd probably pull off the skin and correct the dimple of each part. When it goes back together, I would expect that it would look pretty normal.

Probably the way I'd go.

Dan
 
Can you get a look at it with a magnifying glass or jewelers loupe or something to verify that there's no cracks in the skin? If there is, you may need to enlarge the hole and use an oops rivet as suggested above.
 
Buggered Hole

I have had lots of practice removing rivets and have gotten pretty good at it, so I think I am going to remove the rivets, there are only 7 left and re-dimple both parts again and see how the dimples come out. There appears to be no cracks in the skin at this time. If it doesn't dimple well, I will dimple to #30 or -4 rivet and just have one that's a little bigger. I don't have a lot of confidence in trying to dimple both parts at the same time, together. Thanks everyone for the advice. I'll post a picture of the result.
 
I think if you're really good at drilling out rivets and there are only 7 of them, I'd do that, too. If you have a C-frame for dimpling, some good whacks will really straighten that out. You may never be able to even tell. I'm anxious to see your pictures, when you get it finished. :)
 
"The Fix"

I was able to remove the 7 rivets without any evidence. I then tried to re-dimple the skin for a -3 rivet on the C Frame, but it really wouldn't get all of the sheet. I thought about possibly trying to flatten it out first, then re-dimple, but figured I would potentially mess it up. I tried to put an oops rivet in there, but it didn't cover the dimple well. So I dimpled it for -4 rivet and will have that one rivet bigger than the rest. So far after building the wings and most of the tail, it is the only one and I think only someone building a Van's aircraft will know it's not supposed to be that way. As they say, "perfection is the enemy of completion". Move on. All the other rivets went back in perfectly. Here is the finished product. Thanks again for all of the great advice.

2zhidyq.jpg
 
I just had the honor of dimpling my first non-existent hole in my wing as well. But, I just laughed at it. Now I have to figure out how to fix it :(
 
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