N546RV
Well Known Member
It's becoming one of Those Days. I pulled the leading edges apart and primed last weekend, and was looking forward to maybe getting to the point of shooting some rivets this weekend. Today my first task was going to be riveting the nutplates to the W-423 joint plates.
Problem is, the nutplates don't line up properly with the rivet holes. When I drilled for the nutplates, I held each nutplate in place with a copper cleco, and I guess that allowed the nutplate to slop around a bit as I drilled, and now about half the things won't align with the screw hole and both rivet holes at the same time. I don't see any way to recover from this short of making a new plate.
The real tough question, though, is how to go about making the replacement, seeing as how this piece has to be match up with no less than three other parts? (leading edge skin, inboard leading edge rib, tank skin) I'm especially worried about getting a proper fit with the tank skin since those screw holes are already drilled to full size and dimpled.
The best thought I've had so far is to drill to fit the tank skin first, since that seems to be the most likely place where things could go south. Once that's done, I could go ahead and install the nutplates, place the tank + joint plate assembly on the spar, and then install the leading edge assembly sans the inboard rib, to use as a pattern for drilling the rivet holes in the new joint plate.
A slight bit of good news is that I have a scrap LE skin sitting around that should be a good candidate for making new joint plates, since it already has the necessary bend in it. That might make things simpler while drilling to the tank skin...
Anybody have better ideas? Anyone been through this before and care to share your approach?
There aren't many things more demoralizing than going out to the shop thinking of all the stuff you're going to get done, and coming back out half an hour later realizing you have more stuff for the scrap bin.
Problem is, the nutplates don't line up properly with the rivet holes. When I drilled for the nutplates, I held each nutplate in place with a copper cleco, and I guess that allowed the nutplate to slop around a bit as I drilled, and now about half the things won't align with the screw hole and both rivet holes at the same time. I don't see any way to recover from this short of making a new plate.
The real tough question, though, is how to go about making the replacement, seeing as how this piece has to be match up with no less than three other parts? (leading edge skin, inboard leading edge rib, tank skin) I'm especially worried about getting a proper fit with the tank skin since those screw holes are already drilled to full size and dimpled.
The best thought I've had so far is to drill to fit the tank skin first, since that seems to be the most likely place where things could go south. Once that's done, I could go ahead and install the nutplates, place the tank + joint plate assembly on the spar, and then install the leading edge assembly sans the inboard rib, to use as a pattern for drilling the rivet holes in the new joint plate.
A slight bit of good news is that I have a scrap LE skin sitting around that should be a good candidate for making new joint plates, since it already has the necessary bend in it. That might make things simpler while drilling to the tank skin...
Anybody have better ideas? Anyone been through this before and care to share your approach?
There aren't many things more demoralizing than going out to the shop thinking of all the stuff you're going to get done, and coming back out half an hour later realizing you have more stuff for the scrap bin.
