Wings

The last thing to do on the flaps is to rivet the end ribs in place. Since the flanges point inward, you can't squeeze these rivets. They have to be shot and bucked. That's no problem except for one rivet.

This rivet falls right underneath the nutplate for the flap actuator rod bearing. I don't see how I can buck this rivet. I have checked with other builders and I've seen how they managed to get a solid rivet in here, but I don't know how they did it. I must not have the kind of bucking bar thats small enough, pointed enough or whatever to reach under the nutplate. You can't put the nutplate on after doing this rivet, because the nutplate is riveted on first with flush rivets on the outside and the beefy flap bracket sits over the top of it. All those rivets to the left of the nutplate in the picture above hold the flap bracket on, and one rivet for the nutplate is buried underneath the bracket. So drilling the nutplate out in order to put a solid rivet in here is unthinkable. I think that for this one rivet, I will just use a pop rivet. As much as I prefer solid rivets, one pop rivet won't make or break this project. It's on the bottom, so unless you crawl under the wing and look up, you won't see it.

Well, I used a pop rivet for that one and moved on. The rivets at the aft end of the end rib, where you see the clecos coming through, will be hard to reach for bucking. It's narrow down in there. Once I removed the clecos, though, there was room to buck the rivets one at a time and I got them in. However, there are two rivets beyond the spar, behind the big 1/8" rivet in this picture. Those absolutely can't be reached and will have to be pop-riveted. That finished up my left flap! Now it's on to the right one.

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