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Hard to reach rivets

D Weisgerber

Well Known Member
Is there a trick to riveting the 6 rivets on top of the gear tower where the forward top and side skins overlap over the longeron. I'm not to the point of riveting there yet but I"m looking ahead. The only way I see to rivet them is to get a bucking bar in the gear tower, that will be very tight.
 
Haven't done those yet but I'm fairly certain I've seen where people have just used blind rivets there. There's a very nonzero chance I'll do the same when I get to that point.
 
You can flip the airplane upside down and gravity will keep the bucking bar in place. If you have a rotisserie then this is possible. I will be using pull-rivets for this are.
 
I agonized over those rivets too. If you search the archives you can find a discussion by Paul Dye and others that lead me to the decision to use CherryMax CR 3214-4-4 blind rivets. You can get them from gen-aircraft-hardware.com.
I wish I had known about them earlier..
 
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