RVG8tor

RVG8tor

Well Known Member
OK you can see from the picture I left a nice smile on this rivet. My question is do you drill this out or not:confused: The rivet is set just fine other than the smile, which is fairly deep. OK now that you are working on this answer, I will tell you that I decided to drill this out since I had to drill out another rivet that was cracked. I was going to ask about the smiled rivet before I removed it but decided what the heck I need to reset the other why not do both.

Well that rivet was a major pain to get out and reset, took a few tries (mostly technique errors). I just want to know for future reference should this rivet have been just left alone? Smile are not pretty but are they sound rivet, as long and the head is not cracked?

Thanks.

 
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It's up to you... In the past (early stages of my RV building life), I drilled out several of these, and as you mentioned ended up doing it several times to "get it right".

More often than not, I ended up with a rivet that "looked" better, but if one were able to see under the head at the size of the hole etc, would probably conclude the origional was as good or better.

Now, if they are like this and in a place difficult to get at I leave 'em alone. If they are in full view of the world and easy to get at, I replace them, easy to get at generally also means easy to get it done right on the first retry.

There is good guidance on this Tony Bingelis material and Aircraft Practices.

Just confused you more, huh?

Larry
 
You have already learned your lesson. Unless it is really bad you run the risk of doing more harm than good in drilling out a rivet just for cosmetic reasons. I would consider the minor smiley you showed as cosmetic. Build on.

Steve Eberhart
RV-7A Classic Aero Interior and Icom A-210 were delivered yesterday :)
 
Oops I forgot the picture and then did not hit post when I did edit the post. Sorry. I just saw the un-saved edit still on my window.
 
If you care about a consensus, add my name to the others. If it were my plane, I'd leave it alone. I too have ended up in a place worse than I started by drilling out rivets like this.

Hope this helps.
 
Replacement rivets are often worse than the originals because if not drilled well, the hole gets enlarged and rivets are more difficult to set when loose in holes.

In the future, consider how the stress is applied to the rivet. If in shear and the head looks ugly, I leave it in place. If in tension, where the head may be pulled off or pulled through the metal, I drill sometimes--it all depends on the situation & how bad it looks. Your rivet doesn't look very bad; I would have left it in place; you will get many worse ones before you are done.

Van's says that you could leave out every second rivet and the plane will still be safe, so there is a good margin for error. Obviously several bad rivets adjacent to one another are not good.

Richard Scott
RV-9A Fuselage
 
I agree. It still has its strength. Remember rivets are designed for shear loads. If it's easy to get at both ends and it drives you nuts replace it. But as far as engineers look at rivets, that?s still good. Not pretty, but good.;)
 
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