jferraro17

jferraro17

Opulence, I has it...
In the OLD days, when the flanges on a rib were not match hole, how would you align the turtle deck bulkheads under the skin?


I'm not talking about drawing a line, even us match hole guys know about that. I'm talking about getting the line to be visable through the holes, on a bulkhead you can't reach with the skin in place.

I'm thinking about a temp wood stick between them, cut to line up with the holes, so that at least both bulkheads move together and are prepositioned at the correct spacing.

Any pointers?


Thanks-

Joe
 
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Joe,

I used an 8' piece of all-thread with nuts/washers on each rib of my standard kit (old style) wing. You can see it running through the tips of the ribs in this shot (the brace kept it from moving left/right when the skin was tightened down with straps for final drilling).

AligningLeadingEdgeRibsWithAngleIron.jpg


Maybe you could adapt for the turtledeck on your -8? Or not :).

b,
d 'old head' r
 
Joe
I know exactly what you mean. I went down stairs and found an old tool given to me by a man named Ray Otte, his RV4 was a serial # with 2 digits.

It's a piece of ripped down 1 X material about 7 ft. long, with a plywood gusset screw to the end, with a notch or slot cut in it. We would use this to reposition the wing ribs, to either move them to see a pre drawn line, or to align them to get clecoes in them.
For ribs we had marks for the correct distance from the end rib, to help in grabbing the right rib.
You could use this type of tool to grab the bulkheads if, someone was building a fastback and had a pre-drilled skin but not a bulkhead.:rolleyes:





Best regards
 
Who you calling old!

Joe:

Your idea, along with Doug's are ways of getting things in line. I used a long piece of wood with an "L" glued to the end to either push or pull the bulkheads into view. In a couple of instances where the bulkhead wasn't exactly flat, I had to use an ice pick through the skin hole to draw the line to the center. Didn't like doing that because it gouges the bulkhead with potential cracks later.

When you pull the skin off to dimple, you can smooth out the gouges in the bulkhead as best you can to alleviate those potential cracks.

I'm sure you know that when you rivet, you will need spacers of .020, .025, .032 and possible combinations of each to make sure that the skin is totally flat against the bulkheads so that you don't have any major depressions at a particular rivet along the exterior. Wish that I had payed more attention to that detail when I built mine.

Hopefully the -3 will be better!
 
Old

jthocker said:
Joe
I know exactly what you mean. I went down stairs and found an old tool given to me by a man named Ray Otte, his RV4 was a serial # with 2 digits.

It's a piece of ripped down 1 X material about 7 ft. long, with a plywood gusset screw to the end, with a notch or slot cut in it. We would use this to reposition the wing ribs, to either move them to see a pre drawn line, or to align them to get clecoes in them.
For ribs we had marks for the correct distance from the end rib, to help in grabbing the right rib.
You could use this type of tool to grab the bulkheads if, someone was building a fastback and had a pre-drilled skin but not a bulkhead.:rolleyes:





Best regards
Click to expand...

Doesn't pay to be a slow typer does it? I guess I should learn to insert photos!:D
 
The stick

Joe if you are attempting to align the bulkheads on the fastback then draw your line and use the stick tool as pictured above. You will be pleasantly suprised to see the new bulkheads will not requires much adjustment once in place and the turtledeck temporarily in place. Feel free to PM me. been there done that with the fastback.
 
Two words: duct tape.

Run duct tape along the length of the ribs, across the flanges. That will hold them all in place. Drill through the pilot holes right into the ribs through the tape.
 
prepunch?

Plumb bob, a level and lots of bracing.
picture103oe8.jpg

Oh ya, old school.
picture063gy0.jpg
 
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OK, I'm an Old Guy and Old School...

...on the -6A slow build, I made wooden bulkheads that just fit inside the aluminum bulkheads. The wooden ones were reinforced with 1x2 wood strips (on edge) and screwed onto the wood bulkheads. This ensured that the wooden bulkheads were flat and true. These were then clamped onto the real aluminum bulkheads. The wood material I used was provided by Van, in the form of a shipping crate...well, it was the fuselage shipping crate.

A string could then be stretched along all the aft bulkheads to check for the proper bulkhead flange angle...so that when the skins were applied, there would be good alignment between the two.

The above method may be too "old school" for the newer pre-punched everything, but then you never know.
 
Okay, I just want to take a minute to pay a compliment to ANYBODY who has completed a non-prepunched/match hole kit. My hat is off to each and every one of you...

You sadistic BAS**RDS! :cool:

One skin and 3 bulkheads was enough to show me there is no way I could do this the old way. It's done, and that's that...but I'm glad it's just this one task!




Joe
 
jferraro16 said:
Okay, I just want to take a minute to pay a compliment to ANYBODY who has completed a non-prepunched/match hole kit. My hat is off to each and every one of you...
You sadistic BAS**RDS! :cool:
One skin and 3 bulkheads was enough to show me there is no way I could do this the old way. It's done, and that's that...but I'm glad it's just this one task!
Joe
Click to expand...

That was one funny reply...;)

"One Skin" is too long for a call sign, right?


...still gigglin'.....
 
Joe
You might find this hard to believe, but I found building the original RV4's without pre-punched skins, easier than the later RV6, with only the skins pre-punched.
In the case of the wings, I thought it was easier to clamp a skin to the jigged skeleton,mark around all the ribs and spars, remove the skin, lay a template/drill guide between the marks, then drill the skin.
It took about 15 minutes to drill a flat wing skin this way. Conversely, with a pre-punched skin only,it required very accurate placement of all ribs and bulkheads . Overall I'd say it took me longer to build the pre-punched RV6 wings over the second set of RV4 wings(non pre-punched).
That's kinda why I went quickbuild on the RV8's, I didn't want to build the fuselage that semi pre-punched way.
I'm now embracing technology and would only do complete pre-punched now, if I was to ever build again.:D
 
Jeez...you guys sure came up with some fancy schmancy tools...I used a broomstick sometimes, other times a piece of whatever was laying around (PVC tube, etc..)!

BTW Joe, that fastback is looking WAY cool!

Cheers,
stein
 
jthocker said:
Joe
You might find this hard to believe, but I found building the original RV4's without pre-punched skins, easier than the later RV6, with only the skins pre-punched.
Click to expand...
Jon, you are right on the money, and not alone in your thinking. My 6 was one of the later ones, a "hybrid" if you will, where the wings had the pre-drilled skins only and the fuselage was old fashioned non-pre-anything. With the holes already drilled in the wing skins, you spent a considerable amount of time making the underlying structure fit the existing holes. With non-prepunched skins, you simply jigged up the spars and ribs, marked your ribs lines and went to town. If the rib at station 114.25 was off by 3/16 inch, no big deal, but with the pre-punched skins you were sunk.

In other words, it saved you 10 hours of marking and drilling pilot holes in the skin, at the cost of 9 more hours of layout work.

So, I'm with you. Either completely matched hole or completely old school is the way to go. Building a new matched-hole kit (my 8) has really spoiled me though.
 
Wow, I'm not alone here

I'm just about to begin the fuselage on my now apparently antique, non pre-punched classic 6A. :eek: AMURRAY'S pictures are worth thousands of words to me.
Sure wish I had one like Joe's. :) I do have one of those bulkhead adjusting tools though. Not as fancy as Jon's. Just a broom stick with a long wood screw sticking out the end. I think it's called a Stein stick or something like that.
 
NYTOM said:
I'm just about to begin the fuselage on my now apparently antique, non pre-punched classic 6A. :eek: AMURRAY'S pictures are worth thousands of words to me.
Sure wish I had one like Joe's. :) I do have one of those bulkhead adjusting tools though. Not as fancy as Jon's. Just a broom stick with a long wood screw sticking out the end. I think it's called a Stein stick or something like that.
Click to expand...
Tom,
Building the fuse was the most enjoyable for me. Lots of room, the parts went together real well. The wings are tight. Not much room. Hanging the control surfaces was a pain. It is nice to have the flexibility to put the rivets where you want. I used Becky and George Orndorff's method of marking the skins and drilling them. Worked real well
 
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