Flush rivet rolled leading edges of control surfaces?

[larrynew]

Any reason not to flush rivet the rolled leading edges of the control surfaces like this:



I'm working on Van's practice kit (the instructions said I should end up with various dents, holes and other fumbles and I like to follow instructions) and I didn't like the way the pop rivets held the skin. It seemed to pucker the skin despite gently edge rolling the upper skin per Van's instructions. I previously edge rolled a top skin on Van's raw materials practice kit and it worked fine so I don't think that was the problem.

Anyway, I drilled out the pop rivets and tried countersinking and flush riveting like shown in the picture above. The "bucking bar" I used is a metal bar a neighbor gave me. We don't know what it's made of but it's very heavy and never rusted or tarnished after 20 years outside. It's about 8' long and I suspended it between my two EAA 1000 workbenches with the control surface "threaded" onto it.

I'm not going for show plane perfection. This was just very easy and fast and the overlapped skin looks much better than with the pop rivets. Any reason not to do it this way?

[Mel]

No problem doing it this way. Just unnecessary. It will never be seen unless you remove the control surfaces.

[jferraro17]

On my rudder, I added extra pop rivets in between to keep the puckering down...Mel approved during my Tech Coun. visit. The elevators didn't need it.

Like he says, you'll never see it once installed.

Can't believe this would be quicker/easier than pop rivets...you're good.

Joe

[N200PF]

Larry you will have plenty to do once you start the project. There is no need to spend the time or risk toppling one when you could be moving on to another sub-system.

As they said, these will never be seen anyway.

- Peter

PS - Don't forget to load the edge of the skin that is over lapping by about 1 degree to clean up the joint. You can see the overlapping skin lifting just a little and using any number of edge rollers to bend that edge down ever so slightly will eliminate that and give a nice finished line.