Staying Motivated

[David Paule]

I scrapped my first horizontal stabilizer for poor riveting. It took me some time to decide how to proceed. Then I spent some effort and some money and with better tools, taught myself how to rivet better. Then I bought a new stabilizer and that one turned out ok.

I realized that I'd probably make more mistakes and learn new things. I try to do the learning first and sometimes I can avoid the mistakes. Still, my scrap shelf has plenty of parts in it (I'll skip the list to be merciful to myself) and the cost of replacement parts so far is embarrassing. But I'm improving and most of those are earlier parts rather than recent ones.

Here's what I decided: it's all fun, it's a challenge for me, and I can afford to replace my mistakes, even though I make more than a lot of builders. Keep going!

Dave
RV-3B, now skinning the fuselage

[Strikefinder]

Originally Posted by wirejock

Then as others said, you can add another either side if necessary. Ask Vans to be certain. The extra rivets may not be needed.

Forgive the dumb question, but what happens with the current hole if I put a rivet next to it? Does it just get filler and painted over?

Pretty sure it's on the top, unfortunately...

As far as the rest goes, I've gotten pretty good at doing my research before taking steps and this forum has helped tremendously (I haven't posted much, but I lurk almost daily). Most of the mistakes I've made don't seem to have been errors of knowledge, though--they tend to be just something slipping up. Like this--I've back-riveted dozens (hundreds?) of rivets in the rudder and RH elevator, and felt like this was one of those things I've just gotten pretty good at, which is why it feels like such a step back.

[Strikefinder]

Well, after sleeping on it and calming down, I went out this morning to make another attempt. I had previously had difficulty drilling out the flat heads because it was difficult to feather the Sioux air drill to a slow enough speed to maintain control, so I got out the cordless and set it to low speed--low and behold, that made a tremendous difference and I was able to pull the rivet out without destroying the hole any further. This was probably obvious to everybody else out there...but for whatever reason it hadn't occurred to me that I might be better off with the cordless in this case.

I pulled out another NAS1097 and taped it down really well, cleaned out the area between the stiffener and skin, and redimpled to make sure I had the best shape I could do, and ended up with this:



This I find more than acceptable! I hit the other rivet a few times against the back rivet plate and it flattened out as well...might be a bit overdriven, but I think it meets the standard of "it ain't going to come apart" than I'm going for.

I appreciate the advice and words of encouragement...I think I just needed to vent to some folks that understood the frustration better than the wife does. On to the next mistake!

[N329JR]

FYI... for builders looking to upgrade or prospective builders looking to purchase a pneumatic drill, consider the Nova products from Pan American Tool Corp. The Nova products are extremely quiet and have incredible speed control down to low rpm. My 0.02. (I am in no way affiliated with Nova or Pan American)
Ian

[Reflex]

Strikefinder,

Congrats on keeping your cool, putting your tools down, and backing off overnight. Smart move. I think we all have those moments. Many times the difference in a good fix and starting over is having the patience to back off.

When this type of thing happens I find that two things really help:

1) Stop. Give it some time. Go mow the lawn, get a honey-do out of the way, etc. Just get away from the airplane. I find that when I return, the problem doesn't look nearly as bad as it did.

2) Do some research and put some thought into the fix. I usually look here, maybe call the Mother Ship, or just try and think through a creative fix.

Looks like that's exactly what you did. I think that's how we survive and enjoy the build.

In any case, I think you answered your own question.

By the way, looks like a nice fix!

Fred

[Jake14]

Quote: "You know, there are a lot of great carpenters out there, but the way you can tell a real expert is by how good they are at hiding their mistakes"

[scsmith]

Nice recovery. That looks fine. As others have said, some think time is good. And as you go, you will get better at both avoiding mistakes and coming up with creative recoveries.

Originally Posted by Strikefinder

Well, after sleeping on it and calming down, I went out this morning to make another attempt. I had previously had difficulty drilling out the flat heads because it was difficult to feather the Sioux air drill to a slow enough speed to maintain control, so I got out the cordless and set it to low speed--low and behold, that made a tremendous difference and I was able to pull the rivet out without destroying the hole any further. This was probably obvious to everybody else out there...but for whatever reason it hadn't occurred to me that I might be better off with the cordless in this case.

I pulled out another NAS1097 and taped it down really well, cleaned out the area between the stiffener and skin, and redimpled to make sure I had the best shape I could do, and ended up with this:



This I find more than acceptable! I hit the other rivet a few times against the back rivet plate and it flattened out as well...might be a bit overdriven, but I think it meets the standard of "it ain't going to come apart" than I'm going for.

I appreciate the advice and words of encouragement...I think I just needed to vent to some folks that understood the frustration better than the wife does. On to the next mistake!

[Intruder]

Another tip in removing rivets is to place the drill bit on the hole in the rivet and turn the drill chuck by hand a few turns to get a good hole going. Then connect the airline and drill it out with the rest of the way with the drill.

[jcarne]

Originally Posted by N329JR

FYI... for builders looking to upgrade or prospective builders looking to purchase a pneumatic drill, consider the Nova products from Pan American Tool Corp. The Nova products are extremely quiet and have incredible speed control down to low rpm. My 0.02. (I am in no way affiliated with Nova or Pan American)
Ian

I will agree with this, my Nova is probably the best tool I have in my toolbox. Got mine through Cleaveland.

Strikefinder: I too was very frustrated during the tail and had much the same feelings as you do. I can tell you that it will start to change when you do the wings, the wings are much easier and you also get the practice you need to become proficient. I had to do the horizontal stabilizer spars 3 times and the trim tab 3 times. I feel your pain but it gets easier. Another thing that helped is when I stopped trying to become a perfectionist, letting the tiny things go really helps.

A little tip, I too had back riveting issues similar to this and what I found was that sometimes the skin isn't laying perfectly flat, this pushes the rivet out when you start to buck and it sets way proud.

[N546RV]

One of the interesting, kinda semi-paradoxical things I've learned along this journey has been how to see the often-thin line between "a thing that I need to walk away from and revisit tomorrow" and "a thing that I just need to move past."

There have been plenty of times when I screwed something up, and then screwed it up even worse trying to fix the initial screwup. Sometimes this has gotten to a third- our fourth-order state.

But I can also recall shooting rivets in the horizontal stab, and buggering one up, and just hilariously overreacting. I'd stop what I was doing, curse under my breath, silently wonder if I had what it took to build a frickin airplane, then spend fifteen minutes carefully drilling the thing out. Nowadays I accept that bad rivets happen. I might be shooting a row, and somewhere along the line I have a proud rivet, or I mashed the shop head, or whatever. I shrug, circle it with a Sharpie, finish the row, and the go back and replace the bad ones.

And this attitude extends to much larger foul-ups than bad rivets. I've gotten to a point where I might actually ruin a part, and while I'm not happy about it, I set it aside, note that I need to order a replacement, and move on to something else.

Come to think of it, I guess it's not so much finding that line between "quit for the night" and "push through" as it is just not taking mistakes too hard.


Anyway, on a more practical note, I like Intruder's method. When drilling out a flush rivet, I center punch on the divot, then hand-twist a sharp bit to get the hole going. If the hole wants to be off-center, this is my chance to carefully walk it back to center. Only when I'm satisfied with it being on center do I fire up the power tools.