Best Method to Match Drill top Skin

Dear Guys

Finally ready to match drill the top skin onto the main spar/main ribs. I was thinking which is the best way to do this? Any suggestions?

Assuming that you have the holes drilled (or punched) in the skins, draw center lines on the ribs and a line on the spar that represents the center of al of the holes. Then push/pull the structur underneath the skin until the pines are centered in the hole you want to drill. Drill, cleco...move on to the next one.

Drilling wing skins

If you haven?t riveted the bottom skin , you simply clamp the top skin in place
Then back drill through the ribs with an twelve inch bit. Pre drill ribs first.
I will be home in a few days, you could ring me on 0428732267.

Cheers
Steve Lenne
Rv3 B

What Steve said.

Also, if the bottom skin isn't drilled yet, you can uncleco the top skin and back drill that one, too.

Dave

I’d be really surprised if there are holes already drilled or punched in the ribs of a -3 kit! More likely you will have the holes in the skin already, so backdrilling through the ribs won’t work becasue you’ll end up with random holes.

If there are no holes in either the skins or the ribs, I’d measure and pre-drill the skins so that the line’s of rivets are perfectly straight and perpendicular, then transfer that pattern to the ribs the way I suggested up above.

Paul

From memory when I did mine I predrilled only the main spar holes in the skin then made doubly sure everything was in place and square etc, then I drilled all the spar starting in the centre and working outboard and inboard spanwise. The skin was then "hanging" from the spar, I worked my way down and across from the middle out drilling the skin and ribs together to finish at the rear spar. I am sure there is more than one way to skin a RV 3 wing and this is just how I did mine.
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