Strikefinder
Member
I had a frustrating end to my shop day...I had been humming along, finishing the RH elevator substructure on my RV-8 and was riveting the stiffeners to the LH elevator skin when I managed to booger up a rivet on the inside of the trailing edge fold. I've gotten fairly good at drilling out AN470s, but haven't gotten the knack of drilling out flush heads yet, so when I drilled it out, I ended up with an elongated hole...opened it up to #30 and put an oops rivet in, but somehow that ended up even worse. I decided to put down the tools before I did something more foolish, though I'm fearful that when I drill out the NAS 1097 (and it's bad enough that there's no doubt it will have to come out), I'll end up with an unusable LH elevator skin. I'm not looking forward to ordering the skin and stiffeners, and then doing all the cutting, drilling, deburring, dimpling, priming, etc. again to get back to where I am now...already had to do it with the rudder once, and similarly for one mistake that got out of hand.
I'm not really looking for advice as far as what to do, though...as I'm coming up on the end of the tail section, I admit it's experiences like this that leave me a little daunted about how far I have to go. It's bad enough to have to scrap a few hundred dollars in parts if it comes to that (plus cross-country shipping and the lead time), but I worry about the inevitable screw-up on the wings, when I can't exactly just throw the whole spar out and try again. And I'm still in awe of how much there is to learn--I sort of marvel at all the things that were completely unknown when I started that are now pretty routine, but I just got a starter fiberglass kit and have this sort of feeling that every part of this process is going to make me feel in over my head.
It seems like lots of people around here have made all kinds of mistakes (many of the same ones I have), and have managed to press on...my question is, looking back at where I am now, how did you move past the anxiety of the next steps? Did things just get easier (though not necessarily less time consuming) as you got more proficient, or did you figure out how to fix the mistakes better along the way? Does the learning curve ever start to level out?
I'm not saying I'm on the verge of throwing in the towel or anything--I genuinely enjoy the building process and know I'll feel less frustrated and have a better perspective on what to do now in a few days. I'm just looking for what you guys all think now about where I am, looking back on it...
I'm not really looking for advice as far as what to do, though...as I'm coming up on the end of the tail section, I admit it's experiences like this that leave me a little daunted about how far I have to go. It's bad enough to have to scrap a few hundred dollars in parts if it comes to that (plus cross-country shipping and the lead time), but I worry about the inevitable screw-up on the wings, when I can't exactly just throw the whole spar out and try again. And I'm still in awe of how much there is to learn--I sort of marvel at all the things that were completely unknown when I started that are now pretty routine, but I just got a starter fiberglass kit and have this sort of feeling that every part of this process is going to make me feel in over my head.
It seems like lots of people around here have made all kinds of mistakes (many of the same ones I have), and have managed to press on...my question is, looking back at where I am now, how did you move past the anxiety of the next steps? Did things just get easier (though not necessarily less time consuming) as you got more proficient, or did you figure out how to fix the mistakes better along the way? Does the learning curve ever start to level out?
I'm not saying I'm on the verge of throwing in the towel or anything--I genuinely enjoy the building process and know I'll feel less frustrated and have a better perspective on what to do now in a few days. I'm just looking for what you guys all think now about where I am, looking back on it...