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Riveting side skin to bottom footwell skin

HeliCooper

Well Known Member
My buddy and I are scratching our head over the best way to to rivet the side skin to the bottom of the foot well skin. The holes are partially obscured by the lower longeron and bucking access is very minimal. I didn't know if anyone had any suggestions here. We were at the end of a "didn't go so smoothly" riveting session and stopped here. The holes that are further aft will be right on the edge of tungsten angled bar. The forward holes I can get a footed bucking bar under the longeron but the middle ones are awkward.

Holes are on the left hand side running vertically
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There are hundreds (maybe thousands if you consider all of the custom home/shop made ones) of different shapes of bucking bars.

Look for (or borrow) a bucking bar that has a long toe on it.
 
For others who were getting close. I fabricated a small (5") steel bar out of 3/16" bar stock from home depot. At first we tried using Popsicle sticks to level the bar on the rivet and then placing a bucking bar as close as possible to the rivet on the steel bar. This still folded the rivet over to the outboard side. We tried many different set ups and was about to give up when I decided to try the indirect riveting as show above by Tom. This was the only thing that worked. A stack of 4 popsicle sticks was taped together and placed under the steel bar on one end with the other resting on the rivet. I then placed a flush rivet set in the gun and placed it as close as possible to the rivet on the steel bar. My helper had a back rivet handheld bar on the other side. Still got a couple of bad ones that had to be reset but we at least got them all done. I ended up having to grind down the bar thickness to get under the longeron for the first two rivets where the longeron doubler is. Also I set the rivet gun pressure as high as I normally use for -4 rivets to make up for the loss of force. That pressure seemed to work best.

All in all it took us 3.5 hours to set 24 of those rivets and 10 hard to reach on the intercostals. Hopefully this will save someone some headache and time.
 
Footwell skin rivets RV 14

Cherrymax rivets worked well for the "middle section" under the lower longeron.
Neat, reproducible and pretty strong.
 
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