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Ran out of clecos for HS skin

rdamazio

rdamazio

Well Known Member
I had seen everywhere that for the -10, it was recommended to have about 500 3/32" clecos, so that's what I got when I set up. About halfway through clecoing the skins of the horizontal stabilizer, the impossible happened - I ran out of clecos :/ A count of the empty holes shows I'll need about 500 more to fill them all.

So I'm either missing something obvious (shouldn't I be clecoing every hole for proper alignment?) or the initial recommendation of 500 was wrong. Assuming that a lot of people have hit the same gotcha, which one is the wrong assumption?

Thanks
 
You don't need to fill every hole. Every other or Every third works fine. This way you can match drill the empty holes without having to move a cleco every time. After you drill all of the empty holes, move the clecos to the undrilled holes and do the remaining. Same goes for riveting. Take a cleco out, put in a couple of rivets and move along down the line.

Just wait until you get to the wings! You'll need more clecos unless you go about every 4 holes on the wing skins.
 
After you final drill the holes in between the clecos, but before you move the clecos, mark the ones you've drilled...
 
More Clecos

I think more clecos are better, especially when doing large pieces, like the tailcone and especially wings. When you do your fuel tanks, many of them will get coated with proseal anyway. You can clean them, but it's a real PITA, involving scrubbing and pulling the proseal off in little bits. I ordered more and have been quite happy having enough to cleco every hole. As far as installing/removing all those clecos, get a pnuematic cleco runner to make the job go faster. I think 500 works, so 500 is what the kits have, but in my opinion more is better.

P.S. As a way to encourage others to "spread the good word", I give people who visit my project a cleco to take home as a souvenir, after first explaining how important and ubiquitous it is to airplane building.
 
bruceh said:
Just wait until you get to the wings! You'll need more clecos unless you go about every 4 holes on the wing skins.
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ppilotmike said:
I think more clecos are better, especially when doing large pieces, like the tailcone and especially wings. When you do your fuel tanks, many of them will get coated with proseal anyway. You can clean them, but it's a real PITA, involving scrubbing and pulling the proseal off in little bits. I ordered more and have been quite happy having enough to cleco every hole. As far as installing/removing all those clecos, get a pnuematic cleco runner to make the job go faster. I think 500 works, so 500 is what the kits have, but in my opinion more is better.
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If having every hole clecos will give me even marginally better alignment at some part of the project, then I'll go down that path (as a beginner builder, I'm probably already taking enough chances by lack of skill :) ).

ppilotmike said:
P.S. As a way to encourage others to "spread the good word", I give people who visit my project a cleco to take home as a souvenir, after first explaining how important and ubiquitous it is to airplane building.
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That's cute, I like the idea :)

ArVeeNiner said:
I'm local if you want to borrow some.
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rotoiti said:
I have plenty, I am local and work for the same company as you :)
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Ah, thanks, that's very kind of you two to offer :) if you're not using them, I can certainly give them some love and attention until I get more (or if you're not using them again at all, I could buy them from you).
 
rdamazio said:
If having every hole clecos will give me even marginally better alignment at some part of the project, then I'll go down that path (as a beginner builder, I'm probably already taking enough chances by lack of skill :) ).
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I don't think it will. You'll take twice as long with no better results. If you find any noticeable misalignment between parts, it's probably because you have something put together wrong. The factory punching is dead on. But -- it's your airplane. Putting a cleco in every hole won't hurt anything, do it the way you want.
 
DaleB said:
I don't think it will. You'll take twice as long with no better results. If you find any noticeable misalignment between parts, it's probably because you have something put together wrong. The factory punching is dead on. But -- it's your airplane. Putting a cleco in every hole won't hurt anything, do it the way you want.
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I concur........

You may want to consider getting a pneumatic cleco gun. I got the pistol type and it saved me from getting blisters on my hands. If you think the horizontal was bad, wait until you do the wings. :eek:
 
When building, I had enough clecos to fill every other hole. The main reason was it was easier to keep track of which holes I matched drilled. (Ammo cans make great cleco buckets, BTW.)

I would drill all the open holes, the move the clecos over one hole. While I did it by hand, it went fairly quickly without messing around with another expensive tool. Then again, I hand squeezed every rivet I could and never bought a pneumatic squeezer. The upside was that I had a really strong grip by the time I was done building.
 
The more the better

You'll be happy to have 500+ .. I'm working on the fuse now and I went through the "good" clecos and then dug into the box of the dirty proseal contaminated clecos from the tank build. Almost used them all! I found that the proseal bits didn't hurt a thing and a few on/off cycles did a good job getting the residual bits off.

I did find though that I needed an extra 50 1/8" (copper) clecos. More than your average number of #4 rivets in the front of the fuse!
 
Cleco as necessary-- if the holes line up without stress, like almost all the outer skins, every other hole is best for work flow. If the rivet holes don't quite line up or there are several parts nested together, then use whatever is necessary to keep the holes aligned. (Check to make sure you have the parts assembled correctly! The pre-punch is just about perfect.)

Plus don't forget how heavy that huge RV-10 horizontal stab would get with 1000 clecos in it!! At that point, it can become a real bear to move around the bench without dinging a skin.
 
I concur with most here--every other hole is enough in almost all cases. If you have misalignment problems, probably the fluting isn't up to par. I find you can have more problems (cosmetically, anyway) with not having flanges square to the skin. It shows as a waviness once the paint is on. Cleco the ends of a run. If the center hole is off by much, true things up. With good alignment, every third hole will work.


Bob
 
Value add - "Where was I?"

For me, the allignment thing is what started me down the road to using lots of clecos (first build and all). However, an added value is that I would work down the line of clecos, pulling one then putting it in the hole I just match-drilled, essentially working my way down the line. The "gap" in clecos reminded me where I left off, so I could walk away for days (weeks:mad:) and still find my place again. Once a line was completed, I'd put a tick with a marker on one end. Worked for me, but yes, it's a lot of extra work. As you progress in your project, you'll decide when it's acceptable to use less. It's true that the pre-punched nature of the RV-10 kit means typically, "if it doesn't allign, you're doing it wrong." Happy building.
 
Clekos

ppilotmike said:
For me, the allignment thing is what started me down the road to using lots of clecos (first build and all). However, an added value is that I would work down the line of clecos, pulling one then putting it in the hole I just match-drilled, essentially working my way down the line. The "gap" in clecos reminded me where I left off, so I could walk away for days (weeks:mad:) and still find my place again. Once a line was completed, I'd put a tick with a marker on one end. Worked for me, but yes, it's a lot of extra work. As you progress in your project, you'll decide when it's acceptable to use less. It's true that the pre-punched nature of the RV-10 kit means typically, "if it doesn't allign, you're doing it wrong." Happy building.
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I agree. What could possibly be bad about using as many clekos as possible. The only downside is buying them. Look cor Wedgelock. I built the two 7a wings at the same time using one in every other hole. 1,000 clekos and I actually ran out but that was with all the skins on. I drill the empty holes, mark them with a huge fat sharpie then move the clekos and repeat. Any hole without a mark has not been drilled.
 
Thanks all for the replies.

I took rotoiti's kind offer and now I have a lot more clecos - more than enough to cleco all of the HS :) I haven't had any real alignment issues so far, but I admit to being a little paranoid/perfectionist out of my lack of building experience/skill (when drilling smaller parts like the HS's spar caps I always use clamps around the every few holes being drilled in addition to the clecos for some added firmness, which I understand is probably overkill). I'll try and make an effort to not be so strict about it.

About marking, I agree - I usually do one row at a time then put two green arrows at the ends with a sharpie to indicate that the row was drilled.
 
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