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Advice-Vertical stabilizer

Eztroller

Well Known Member
some of the rivets are folded over slightly..... all are within specs, but I don't like how all of them "look." Not expecting perfection, but also don't want to miss something.

Thanks
 
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Not perfect but look fine as long as they are in spec .. and nobody will see them .. as long as you can live with it ;) build on!
 
is am using a Numatx 3500 squeezer, about 80PSI, and went reaalllyy slow when squeezing. Is there another technique to make them more uniform?
 
I don't know anything about the Numatx but mine (Cleveland Tool) has a cam in it so the last bit of travel is kind of a "snap" which really gets the shop heads looking nice once you get the hang of it.

At least you put them in the right direction, I ended up drilling a good bit of mine out to reverse .. oops .. seems like a long time ago but was just April!
 
Not familiar with that squeezer, but mine gets the best results when they are squeezed at full speed, and always use the max PSI of 90. I have an inline flow restrictor that can be adjusted also if I need to come up on it slower.

Those don't look bad, but with a little trial and error I'm sure you'll figure it out.
 
Not expecting perfection, but also don't want to miss something.

Rivets look to be ok as is.

Here's some things I've learned through the build so far.
1. If a rivet appears to be structurally sound, leave it alone. In trying to replace a rivet that's less than perfect, it's easy to create a bigger problem than when you started on that quest for perfection. (Ask me how I know.)
2. On the bent over shop end with squeezer, I really battled this early on for some reason. At first, I actually prefered gun and bucking bar due to the tendency of my heads to fold over slightly. After many rivets with squeezer, it will become 2nd nature on how to hold squeezer very square to make nice shop ends.

For what it's worth, you will become ok with small imperfections as the build goes on, especially the ones that won't show. If this is your 1st build, everything in the vertical stabilizer phase seems so much more critical since "we don't know what we don't know". As you build on, that very thin line between things that are "not as pretty as you wish, but structurally sound" and the need to do it over will become much easier to distinguish.

Good luck with your build!
 
Shop heads like the ones in the photos are caused by just two things.

Technique - the squeezer not being perfectly aligned with the shank of the rivet at the start of setting, or the squeezer being allowed to tilt while squeezing.
The rate it is squeezed (air pressure used) can have a small influence on this because the faster the plunger moves, the harder it can be to maintain alignment.

Rivet length - The longer the unset rivet shank is, the harder it is to set it straight with a squeezer (with a gun and bucking bar it is usually less critical).
This is why there is often criticism of the rivet lengths called out in the plans. If a specific rivet length is going to be just a bit on the long side (based on the 1.5XD rule of thumb, the next size smaller will often be specified if it will still produce a shop head that meets the MIL SPEC.
Using this very slightly undersized length has a major influence on the ease of forming a proper shop head.

If you chose to use the next size longer rivet than specified, it is at least part of your problem.

This is not to say that the plans specified rivets should always be used without question. Mistakes can be made, and the builder is the final quality control decision maker.
 
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