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Match drilled fuselage parts

vinzer

Well Known Member
I recently received my fuse kit and continued on building my plane ;) Finally!

During first steps I found interesting fact: some of my parts are already match drilled and some are not.

Yes I am aware of the fact that VANs is moving to the all match drilled parts and I was hoping to get these in my kit however it looks like I have a mix of match drilled and not match drilled parts. What I actually found is that parts manufactured (according to bar code label available on most of parts) before June 2020 are not match drilled while most (if not all) manufactured on or after June 2020 are match drilled.
Instructions which I have call for match drill to be done however I see that in fact it is only needed on some parts (where say #30 holes are still #31 sized, etc).
What I do (and hope this is correct aproach) is I am checking parts I work on and if they are all match drilled obviously I am ignoring instructions to match drill again (no point), however if I work with mix of parts I do match drilling always from the side of match drilled part. Means if I attach together two parts (non match drilled and match drilled) I do match drilling from the side of match drilled part.
Do you think this approach is safe ?:rolleyes:
 
Match drilling widens the hole on the 3/32 drilled part to fit the already drilled #40 hole that was factory drilled to match size. I recommend therefore drilling from the #40 to start and then into the 3/32 part. Your holes would line up better, since the #40 hole may force the 3/32 hole to drill to #40 a little off center in order to match in alignment. Were you to drill from the 3/32 side into the #40, you might oval that #40 hole a little if the centers do not line up perfectly and the 3/32 hole starts the bit a little bit off the center of the #40.

Same thing for 1/8 and #30, etc.
 
On the RV-14 wing parts,(same parts as the 10 wing) they have color coded identification tags to indicate the parts that have been final sized. Don't know if it's the same on the 10 but I would assume , but you know what happens when you assume.
 
On the RV-14 wing parts,(same parts as the 10 wing) they have color coded identification tags to indicate the parts that have been final sized. Don't know if it's the same on the 10 but I would assume , but you know what happens when you assume.

yeah, no color coding... but it's all noted on the drawings.
 
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