Dimple and hard rivet the RV-12

[Ted Farmin]

I would like to dimple and hard rivet where possible and use flush pop rivets where necessary. Has anyone thought of this or doing it. Any ideas of other problems that may develope from doing this mod. I realize that this may cause the lic. to be amature built.

RV-4 flying

 

[Mark Henderson]

This has been discussed several times. The wing in particular is not engineered to allow bucking the rivets. Going to flush rivets will not improve the speed or performance enough to warrant the extra work.

 

[smokenjoe50]

There is some cs4 flush pop rivets in the leading edge and I think they look much better. It would take a little more time but I think the plane would look better if you used cs4 instead of lp4.

 

[Pirkka]

Any ideas of other problems that may develope from doing this mod.

If I've understood the holes haven't needed any drilling but if you are going to dimple them, then I guess the reaming and deburring of holes might be wise. This takes a lot of time compared how the process goes now. If already willing to use that much extra time, why not go with solid rivets? It seems (based on clecos I've seen in RV-12 building pictures) they are AD4 rather than AD3s used normally on these planes so actual riveting with solid rivets may be more difficult though.

 

[vernhendershott]

It takes a great deal of skill with AD4 rivets to use a rivet gun on just two sheets of 0.020 2024 T-3, if the bucking bar is not held just right it will look like a hammer was used poorly to drive them. Give it a try on some scrap a few times to see how you do and remember to try with some of the arm reaches we always get when reaching way into a wing to buck the hard to get at rivets.

I think that using the CS pulled rivets would work if one was so inclined it would just be the extra time to use the "C" frame to dimple the sheets of skin as the rivet strengths are similar between the LP and CS rivets.

Best regards,
Vern

 

[vfrazier]

The smooth finish you'd get from using the CS pops would make it somewhat easier to paint and keep clean in years ahead.... but only if you don't have a bunch of rivet stems sticking up causing trouble.

It's one of those decisions like "to prime or not to prime."

Have fun!