Fixing a dent/crack in wing leading edge :-(

[txnbuilder]

Today, while riveting one of the wing leading edges, I managed to drop my nice heavy bucking bar inside. The result was a ding/crack in the skin!

The picture shows the crack, but doesn't really show the ding very well.

I have already sent a message to Vans, but I would appreciate any suggestions on how to address this.

The crack is just the right size so I can drill it out with a #30 drill. So, I think I can try to first flatten the ding with a thick spoon, and then drill the crack out. Then dimple and plug the hole with a blind rivet. Why not a solid rivet? Because the ding is right on the tip of the leading edge, with no rib to back it up. I am afraid of making things worse if I hit it with the rivet gun and slip just a little....I'm thinking some light sanding and filler prior to final paint should make the blind rivet dissapear? -- thoughts?

Thanks!

------
Luis Orozco
Austin, TX
RV-7A Slowbuild Wings!

 

[JonJay]

Not that big of a deal

There are many acceptable ways to fix. Your flush blind rivet idea might work, but I would be concerned about not having enough surface area for the filler to hold on. I would just leave the blind rivet alone if I went that approach. Call it a trophy or witness to your build.
The metal has stretched, and you can not unstretch it, so I doubt you will be able to coax it back into shape with a spoon. Perhaps, and you cant hurt anything trying that.
Judging from the size, it is quite a small dent? If so, you can file off the protrusion flat. This will leave a bit of a hole where the crack is. You could then carefully dent that hole in to allow for the filler to bite well. I like your idea of drilling it to stop the crack, but you will need to dent it in enough to allow enough surface area for the filler to take hold. You can't just fill a hole.
Regardless, get lots of ideas from your post and I am sure someone will come up with a solution that works for you. You will never know it was there.

 

[flyeyes]

might be a good spot for a stall warning vane like the RV-10 ;-D

 

[SportAvServ]

Dent fix

Sense this is cosmetic and not structural; there is a hundred ways to fix it. One way would be to drill it out with a #30, use a shot bag behind it and tap it with a flat hammer lightly, don?t use a bucking bar or ?dolly? it would just flatten and spread the aluminum. File it lightly or sand it with 400 on a block to see the high and low places. You could use filler but a little JB weld would do just as well for such a small repair, but you would put a little inside to support the little bit of filler on the out side. I might even counter sink the hole a little and use a ?soft? rivet and just file it flat. Any way you do it should be OK as long as you drill the crack out.

Randy

 

[WilburD2]

Filling the hole

Luis,

Personally I like the blind rivet after drilling out idea best. But instead of just riveting the skin alone, get some scrap the same thickness as the skin and make an internal doubler. Use a little pro-seal or 2 part epoxy to keep the doubler from moving around the rivet, and call it fixed.

Or, you just determined which bay you're going to put your leading edge landing light in.

 

[txnbuilder]

Landing light ...

As soon as I saw the crack, I thought "hmm..I guess I'm going with a leading edge light..." until I realized the ding is in the most inboard bay (next to the fuel tank) ....so no leading edge light there....back to the pop rivet idea...

BTW, thanks for the all the suggestions...

Luis

 

[grantcarruthers]

Turn the outty dent into an inny and fill before paint. Treat the crack of course too but ending with a slightly concave surface and filling will give the best cosmetic end result I'd guess.


.02 cents from somebody who's broke (i.e. never been there never done it).

 

[Neal@F14]

Alumiweld brazing rods

http://www.alumiweld.com/

I saw these demonstrated as Oshkosh and they were pretty slick!

Sticks to aluminum like solder sticks to copper. Heat with propane or Mapp gas torch. Some kind of zinc alloy that sticks really well to aluminum.

I'd stop-drill the holes in the cracks, dent the skin inwards a tiny bit then fill with these alumiweld sticks and sand back to a smooth finish, prime and paint.

I bought a package of these sticks at Harbor Freight for about $12.

 

[ditch]

I feel your pain, dropped the bucking bar in the wing also but luckily the wing was laying on the table and it hit the bottom skin. Didn't know I even did it until I turned the wing over. No crack in mine and the dimple was small enough to just leave well enough alone.

 

[HEGASIS]

Shoot an A rivet in there. A's are like butter. If you drill out the damaged area ck for a 1097, shoot a 426 and sand it with a red scotch bright disc then blue when you get close to the skin and work it in 90 deg alternating patters to shine up the rivet you will never see it and it will literally hold for 100 years. I would worry about the filler holding across a hole without a doubler behind it.

Please dont take a flame to the wing, you'll ruin the heat treatment and invite corrosion down the road. The damaged area really should be removed and not bent inwards, bending it inwards will due funky things with stress in an area that's not meant to be a lightning hole. This repair should be cheap and easy. I'm not trying to throw snowballs, just trying to help.

 

[txnbuilder]

Shoot an A rivet in there. A's are like butter. If you drill out the damaged area ck for a 1097, shoot a 426 and sand it with a red scotch bright disc then blue when you get close to the skin and work it in 90 deg alternating patters to shine up the rivet you will never see it and it will literally hold for 100 years. I would worry about the filler holding across a hole without a doubler behind it.

Mark,

Thanks for the suggestion, but I need some education here. What do you mean by 'drill out the damaged area ck for a 1097?..' I assume this means drill out the crack and dimple to fit a 1097 rivet?

I've never used an 'A' rivet before, but I'm going to definitely going to try it out!

Sorry for wanting things absolutely spelled out, but I like the sound of 'will never see it and hold for 100 years'

 

[txnbuilder]

Shoot an A rivet in there. A's are like butter. If you drill out the damaged area ck for a 1097, shoot a 426 and sand it with a red scotch bright disc .....

Ahh... ck = countersink... (to avoid dimpling the skin back....)

I like it....

 

[HEGASIS]

Exactly. If you've never shot an A before I would suggest you try it on some scrap, you can then get a feel for the scotch wheels on the rivet and perfect you're technique. You'll be shocked at just how easy it is to set these rivets. Remember these are not structural rivets so don't use them in places they were not meant to be in. It should be a pretty simple and cheap fix... NOW GET BACK TO BUILDING!

 

[cwreeves]

OOp's

If it were me, I'd drill it out, deburr, dimple and drive a solid 426 rivet. If you don't have one already you can buy a dimple dies used with pop rivet tool. Then use Aero-Poxy light weight filler or epoxy/micro balloons to make it pretty.
Charlie, RV-7, Tucson AZ

 

[txnbuilder]

Dent Fixed!

Thanks to everyone who posted their suggestions on how to fix this. I ended up [mostly] following Mark's advice. I am VERY pleased with the results. I figured I'm not the first or the last to run into this problem, so I thought I'd post a step-by-step description of what I did for future reference.

First I ordered some AN426A-4-3 rivets from Aircraft Spruce. Actually, I ordered about 397 more rivets than I needed (hey, they won't sell me less than 1/8 of a pound!). Even so, this was my first time putting in a $2 order, and was pleasantly surprised they sent it to me via USPS and charged me only something like $2.50 for shipping.

With the rivets on hand, I took a piece of scrap aluminum, set it between two blocks of wood, and dropped my bucking bar on it (hey -- I had to do a practice run first, right?!).

I went through all the steps on the scrap piece, and since I liked the results, decided to try it on the wing...

So, this is what I started with....a right leading edge with a small but nasty ding/crack near the tip...

I got some 120 grit sandpaper and a small piece of 2x4, and made me a sanding block. I sanded off the tip of the ding, which made it a lot easier to drill it from the outside (drilling from the inside would have been a bit challenging because of the angle at which the drill would have to be in order to be perpendicular to the skin).

Then I put a hole in the middle of the crack. I started with a #40 drill and then final drilled to #30. This completely removed the crack.

After deburring the hole, I used a 'pop-rivet dimple die' to dimple the hole. I decided to dimple and not countersink for a couple of reasons. First, the hole completely got rid of the crack and *most* of the dent, and I would rather not remove more material than necessary. This is one of the reasons why I definitely agreed with Mark about practicing on a piece of scrap first.

With the dimpled hole, I put the rivet in, put some masking tape on it to hold it in place, and set it with the rivet gun. I set the air pressure on the gun to 20psi and only had to give it a few hits before the rivet was fully set. Now I REALLY know why they call these 'soft' rivets!

***Very important*** Do NOT drop bucking bar while fixing dropped bucking bar dent!!!!!

Finally, I used first a red and then a blue scotch-brite disc to make things look pretty.

So there you have it...

Mark, thanks again for the advice!

 

[AX-O]

Nice job and very simple solution.