Trent's RV14 Build: 6-02:05 - Vertical Stab Priming and Assembly

After a almost 2 weeks away in China at an airshow, I finally got back to the VS, by preparing the VS components for priming, then priming itself.

My choice of primer is Stewart Systems, 2 part EkoPoxy in smoke grey, with EkoClean and EkoEtch prior to painting. I chose this method as i am painting at home, and anything else was simply to hazardous to be spraying around my family and neighbors. More on the priming process in a later post.

The first priming session was the VS forward spar and doubler. Once this was primed, i squeezed the first rivets of the project:

Once this was done, i primed the rest of the VS components:

The priming process is not too bad - i use a DeVilbiss Starting line gun, at 30 PSI at the regulator, and about a 20 foot line. So long as i make sure the centre of the test shot on to the cardboard is wet, the paint goes on well. If not, it can be a little orange peely / rough to the feel (i.e. too dry), but it is only primer: there to protect not to be topcoated. The Stewart systems is fairly thick, and once mixed and thinned sprays fine. I keep it inside to keep the temperature of the paint at 20C, and keep the heater on in the back room. If it is cold, then it won't spray. More on that later.

Once the parts had dried for about 12 hours, i was able to rivet together the forward spar. This went ok with the squeezer with only a few rivets that may be questionable. I drilled out 3 rivets. I back riveted the AD426 rivets at the bottom of the spar. I also chose to put the manufactured heads forward on the spar, up to where the skin starts, purely so the tails of the rivets were all on the same side on the lower portion where the VS is in the fuselage. Van's asks for the manufactured head to be on the aft side, so there is more room to squeeze the spar to skin rivets later. Below the skin though, i didn't see any reason why not put the shop heads aft - plus this put them on the thicker material. Some of the rivets on the lower brackets could not be squeezed, and i used a gun for these.

Backriveting the lower AD426 rivets.

very satisfying

Will get a TC to check these before i rivet it to the assembly and close it up forever

Drilling out - on AD4 rivets, i used a #31 drill initially and break the head off. I then use a #41 drill to drill almost through the stem. They can then be sometimes punched out, but sometimes it is easier to twist them out with a set of side cutters.

I color coded the rivet call out, so as not to make a mistake.

Once the spar was done, i riveted together the skeleton, using the squeezer. The lower ribs were done using a bucking, and my first go at a 6" offset cupped set, which seemed to work ok.

Skeleton and skin ready to come together.

I was then going to give it a break, as i didn't want to start on the skin rivets at the end of the day (and screw something up). I decided to mount the cradles onto a new work platform, and just cleco the skin in place and leave it for the day. Then i figured i would just shoot one rivet. Then i ended up doing them all!!!

I used a swivel mushroom set, and a tungsten bucking bar, with a wooden offset so i could keep the bar parallel to the skin:

The finished product, showing the cradle dad made up for me, securely clamped to the work platform. This made reaching in and bucking the spar rivets easy, plus allowed me to go back and forth between the left and right side, keeping the rivet pressure even.