Stjohn's RV-7

6 Hours
Ahh. Significant progress, finally. Today, I actually RIVETED SOMETHING! But I’ve got some pics here, so I’ll just go through them.

This is the VS bits, ready for prep, and the big giant bitchin tool chest upon which they sit is already worth its weight in, uh, stainless steel. The drawer that’s open there is the drill drawer.

First evidence of priming. For the record, I HATE priming. It sucks. I’m going to prime as little as possible, because it’s messy, complicated, time-consuming, environmentally unsound, and hazardous to your health. I’m going to put my faith in Alclad where it exists, because it’s going to be a better protector of metal than any prime job that I’ll give it. Having said that though, I found a nice primer that’s real close to the color of the dropship and the APC in James Cameron’s “Aliens.”

Some more bits. I remember reading in the construction manual somewhere that it’s OK to scribe part designations into the metal. That’s what I did, because this nice, friendly, USCM-issue self-etching primer covered up the sharpie marks pretty well.

The blue thing in the upper left corner is the Rose Bowl swap-meet HVLP gun I picked up for 28 bucks. The manual was interesting; it read like it was translated from another language by a computer and transcribed manually by someone who spoke a different language altogether. Didn’t matter though. It didn’t leak and shot half-decent paint, after some work dialing it in. That’s what the various patterns below the dartboard are.

OK, here’s everything, looking good, let’s rivet it… Crap.

Before we get too ahead of ourselves, let’s dig the HS reinforcement bars out from behind all the other crap and paint them too. Grr.

First Rivets! Well, second rivets. And they’re WrONG! yippeee! Supposed to put the shop head on the side with the thicker material. But I used my lifeline. Dan C said it’s probably OK to do it this way as long as the metal on the other side doesn’t get distorted, which it didn’t, except for one rivet, which I later drilled out and re-did. That little sharpie graffito there that says “Every Move a Picture” is a band I heard on the radio, and I didn’t want to forget what it was so I wrote it down on the worktable. It’s good stuff, sounds a little bit like Joy Division without the death, New Order without the whine, and early Duran Duran without the hairspray.

Smiles, everyone, Smiles! Still riveting arse-backwards at this point.

Hey, now that’s got it! Thanks Dan! using the C-frame actually kind of rocks.. almost hands-free, but I think it’s now time to revisit the pneumatic squeezer, squeezer sets, and squeezer yokes. I’ll need to pick up the adjustable piston, a few flat and cupped sets, and a couple of yokes, namely the 4″ and the longeron yoke.

Here, we’re looking at the aft HS spar put together (except for 2 bad rivets I have to drill out) and the beginnings of the forward HS spar.

And here’s the HS spars, riveted! badda boom, baby.