Wings

Today I finished up the installation of the Duckworks Landing light, and worked on some tool issues in preparation for riveting the leading edge onto the wing spar.

Here's the bracket and the retaining strips for the light, primed and with nutplates installed.

The light gets mounted to the bracket, the bracket gets mounted inside the wing, and now we're ready for the lens cover. Note the holes in the above shot have been dimpled for the retaining screws.

The retaining strips are held in place on the lens by this black double-stick tape. This lens is now ready to install.

Done! The lens is all fitted in place and screwed down. Here are views from the bottom and top of the wing. Nice!

I'm planning on trying this double-offset rivet set to rivet the leading edge ribs to the wing spar. The clearance is very small and I had to grind down this tool in order to get it to fit on the rivet head. We'll see if my idea works.

I'm also toying with another idea. Sort of a backriveting method for riveting the ribs to the wing spar. I had this old hammerhead lying around, and saw that it weighs about the same as one of my bucking bars. So I polished up the end of it and drilled a 3/16" hole to accept common rivet sets.

I'm thinking that if this could be used inside the leading edge to buck the round head end of the rivet, then the shop head could be driven from underneath using a flat or backrivet set.

Here you can see that I'm trying it out, holding it inside with the rivet set resting on the top of an AN470 rivet. I have hopes that this will work. Any comments from other builders would be appreciated.

Update: See my entry for December 27th for more pictures and my comments on this method.

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