Riveting Bottom Wing Skins

[rockitdoc]

I'm ready to close up my wings on my -14 and am a bit flummoxed as to how to buck the aft rivets in the center of the lower skin since my arms and those of my helpers are not 6 ft long. Any tricks appreciated. The photo shows where I am talking about marked in green.

 

[BravoAlphaRomeo]

What worked for me was to leave the wing in the cradle and use blocks to lift the entire cradle and wing so the leading
edge is around 20” off the ground. This varies depending on your height and your stool height. Then of course use blocks to gently hold the skin apart at the bottom say 10” or so which allows you to get your arm all the way up into the top rivets. If you have really short arms, you could be just out of luck and need two people. I wanted to have a good comfortable position while I did this and it was all I could come up with, but it did work.
Took me 4 days going slow for both wings. Good luck

 

[PhatRV]

When I was riveting the bottom wing skin on my RV8, I placed the wing in two position.
To rivet the inner skin, I layed the wing flat like in the picture and all the inner rivet holes could be easily reached while the wing was in the lay-flat position.
I needed the wing to be in the up right position to rivet the outter skin.

However, I did not rivet the rear spar first. I incrementally rivet from the inboard lower spar and progressively moved outboard. I am 5'6" tall and my arm could reach all the rivets using this method. See the picture below. These are the general direction I was using

Also, I dry-run using clecos to incrementally close the bottom wing skin and wrote on the wingskin the sequence that worked. So that I didn't forget the sequence when doing the actual riveting. The 2nd picture shows the scribbling of the riveting step during the dry-run. I saw at least one Youtube video where the builder got trapped in to a corner. So I thought doing the dry-run was important enough for me to do.

 

[Aden Rich]

If you left it vertical and peeled the skin back leaving a row of clecos in the first rib and used a bungee to hold the skin open, someone bucks and someone rivets and you work from inboard ribs to outboard. Thus riveting yourself out of the wing. Laying it down you have to bend over and fight gravity keeping the skin open.

 

[wirejock]

On the 7, Vans is pretty specific about the order of riveting. Basically an "L" pattern toward the outboard. It's not difficult with two people. The last rivets are bucked by sticking an arm through the outboard rib holes. Slip and old sock over your arm.

 

[rockitdoc]

Here's what I came up with to get the skin out of the way while I try to reach the most aft rivets. Seems like it might work. At least I can reach them with my bucking bar in one hand while banging with the other. We'll see. Hopefully, the fact that six of the seven straps are not Snap-Ons will not affect the results.

 

[mountainride]

Use a Bucking Bar Bumper or you will for sure end up with dings on the bottoms skins. Its really help it from slipping off the shop head on these and when it does, won't create a mark. I was able to use a shop stool to reach up and hit them all solo. https://mountainrideaviation.com/products/bucking-bar-bumper

 

[airguy]

I did it this way with duct tape on both loose edges, so I could rivet from the center outward.

 

[AZSteve053]

On the 7, Vans is pretty specific about the order of riveting. Basically an "L" pattern toward the outboard. It's not difficult with two people. The last rivets are bucked by sticking an arm through the outboard rib holes. Slip and old sock over your arm.

As Larry mentioned - process for a 7, goes quick and relatively easy... 2 people for most of it is what I found best.

 

[jdelpeso]

The instructions for me are not very clear
Attached is the pattern I'm going to follow
Jose del Peso

 

[Ralph Inkster]

I rent a portion of my hangar to a 14 builder. He & a friend riveted the bottom skin on one wing in the horizontal position. It looked like such a painful process that I decided to help out & start the on the second wing while they continued with the first one.
I chose to prop the second wing in the vertical leading edge up position, clamping the inboard spar to my work bench & support the outboard end on a stack of 2x4s so the spar was level. This way I could cleco the skin along the rear spar and a third way up each rib allowing the skins to flex open enabling me to reach in & down to buck with one arm & operate the gun with the other. I used the ‘L’ sequence rivet pattern described in previous posts. One man operation for me to rivet that lower wing, with a small fraction of the ‘grunting’ compared to the team working the other wing layed flat.

 

[fl-mike]

Whatever you do, think of gravity and what a dropped bucking bar will do. And trust me, it will always land corner-down.
Towels-a-plenty below whatever are you are working on.
A dropped bar will find that lightning hole in the spar and generate maximum velocity towards the leading edge.
Those bars can be downright evil!

 

[Swingwing]

This is how I did my 7 by myself

 

[mountainride]

Whatever you do, think of gravity and what a dropped bucking bar will do. And trust me, it will always land corner-down.
Towels-a-plenty below whatever are you are working on.
A dropped bar will find that lightning hole in the spar and generate maximum velocity towards the leading edge.
Those bars can be downright evil!

I keep a small yo yo string keeper on my bucking bar that removes that anxiety!

 

[bk1bennett]

Here's what I came up with to get the skin out of the way while I try to reach the most aft rivets. Seems like it might work. At least I can reach them with my bucking bar in one hand while banging with the other. We'll see. Hopefully, the fact that six of the seven straps are not Snap-Ons will not affect the results.

View attachment 62648

I notice that you have pretty much everything installed, including the aileron actuation hardware. The plans call for installing the bottom skins after the aileron actuation hardware, but I was thinking about doing the aileron stuff first, too. Was riveting difficult with the torque tubes and autopilot servo hardware installed?

 

[Nihon_Ni]

Here's how I did my RV8 wings solo. I was in the basement, so I clecoed a piece of scrap to the then, and used it to tied the skin to a rafter and adjusted it after each series of riveting in an L-pattern others have described above.

 

[bk1bennett]

Effective creativity! Well done.

 

[skelrad]

Similar to what others did - I kept the wings in the cradle and just rolled the skins up enough to be able to reach everything. I actually found it easier to rivet myself vs fight a second body for space.