Yesterday fellow forum member and EAA Technical Counselor Scott McDaniels flew to my house to check the progress of my build to date. As many of you know from his helpful posts here, Scott is extremely knowledgable about all things related to building Vans airplanes. Scott was very helpful and is a super nice guy. I will definitely have him do my final inspection once my build is complete!
Scott shared one tip with me that I wanted to pass along and that was how to remove the "dents" that form when setting rivets in the curved upper section of the fuselage as shown below. Scott explained that when using a typical flat mushroom rivet set on these curved sections of the upper skins, it leaves the area around the rivets more flat than curved. His suggestion was to get a fairly large (easier to control) punch and tap on the shop side of the rivet gently with a hammer a couple of times. To be honest, it sounded kind of crude (hammers and airplanes don't seem to mix to this new builder). Anyway, the results were amazing. It instantly pops out the "dent" and makes these curved sections of the fuselage much cleaner.
Keep in mind this technique won't work with an actual dent made from over-driving rivets, missing the bucking bar, etc. It only works with properly set rivets on curved skins.
These are the rivets I'm referring to (red lines below). Maybe the rest of you already know about this but it was news to me and the easiest thing I've ever done to improve the appearance of "substandard" rivets.
Scott shared one tip with me that I wanted to pass along and that was how to remove the "dents" that form when setting rivets in the curved upper section of the fuselage as shown below. Scott explained that when using a typical flat mushroom rivet set on these curved sections of the upper skins, it leaves the area around the rivets more flat than curved. His suggestion was to get a fairly large (easier to control) punch and tap on the shop side of the rivet gently with a hammer a couple of times. To be honest, it sounded kind of crude (hammers and airplanes don't seem to mix to this new builder). Anyway, the results were amazing. It instantly pops out the "dent" and makes these curved sections of the fuselage much cleaner.
Keep in mind this technique won't work with an actual dent made from over-driving rivets, missing the bucking bar, etc. It only works with properly set rivets on curved skins.
These are the rivets I'm referring to (red lines below). Maybe the rest of you already know about this but it was news to me and the easiest thing I've ever done to improve the appearance of "substandard" rivets.