Dinged my tank skin!

[Paul B]

Yesterday I joined the "dropped my bucking bar at the wrong time" club. While riveting ribs to my tank skin, I dropped my small but heavy tungsten bar into the fuel tank. It hit point first very near the most forward part of the leading edge. The ding is very noticeable on the outside of the skin with a pretty bad gouge on the inside. I have often padded areas that I thought might be exposed to my clumsy building technique, but for some reason I didn't see the (now) obvious risk here.

Here is my plan for repair: I will cut and shape a piece of hardwood to fit the leading edge inside the tank at the injury site. I will cover the protruding "nipple" on the outside with some tape and tap with a hammer while holding the wood on the other side. I also plan to scuff and clean around the area of the gouge, then apply a small amount of proseal to prevent corrosion.

Is this the right or easiest way to repair this? Should I be doing something more? Any input welcome!

[wfinnell]

Paul,

I am sorry to hear about your acci-dent. I can feel your pain because I did the exact same thing. My rubber glove got caught on a cleco as I was pulling my hand out of the tank and it yanked the bar right out of my hand.

I also tried a similar repair. I cut an oak shape for the inside and had my son hold it in place while I tapped from the outside. I used a small wooden block against the dent and tapped on that. I couldn?t get the last little bit to go down, so I used a punch backward with the flat side on the tank. That worked well but left a small mark. I think I can sand it out. I am planning on polishing my plane and I think it will not be noticeable. If you were going to paint I think you would be better off tapping in enough that it becomes an innie dent then filling it.

I also scuffed and prosealed, about the size of a quarter.

I don?t know if this is the best fix, but that is what I did?

Good luck,

Bill Finnell
RV-8 Wings (Fuse on order)
Tucson AZ

[pierre smith]

....on our Agwagon leading edges, since there are enough different diameters to pretty much match leading edge radiuses (radii?)

Best,

[flickroll]

Once I got a very small dent at the leading edge after the airplane was already painted and flying. Have no idea how it occurred. Luckily, it was in an area I could reach by removing the wingtip. What I did was use the hard plastic of the rounded end of a screwdriver handle, and slowly worked the dent. After a little while the dent had vanished.

[Jamie]

When you dent metal you also stretch it which can make gettings dents to disappear near-impossible. I had a couple of those on the leading edge of my wings. The best course of action if you can't get the dent out is to turn the 'outtie' into an 'innie' and fill it when you paint it. You are going to paint it, right? Paint covers all sins.

[RV7Ron]

If you're painting it and its just cosmetic (there is no structural damage to the skin) just use some lightweight filler. I use West Systems 407 low density filler because I will have a dark paint scheme, otherwise 410 works too. Works great for small dings in the skins.