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Things were going so well

W

Wyzepilot

Active Member
So things were going so well till now. I had managed to get up to riveting the skin on the vertical stabilizer without and real problems, in fact I was very happy with the results. However, I feel like all that hard work was for naught as I put a couple of nice dents in the skin trying to rivet the middle nose rib to the skin. Its kinda like having a perfect flight then bouncing the landing!!!

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Do I press on or drill these out and order a new skin. The picture doesn't do the dent much justice, its pretty noticeable. The other side came out much better but I'm I little upset with the way this is going….:mad:
Thanks!!!!

Dave
 
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You think that's bad? Just wait until you really mess up...at some point you realize that if the "professional airplane builders" can't get it perfect (just check out any new Beech, Piper or Cessna) with all their experience, tooling and engineering, you won't either. As Mike S says, build on!
 
Ha, I would be worried if your plane didn't have any dents. Mine has its share and most only I know about (well, I did have to divulge to my painter to fix). 99.9999% of people will never know it's there. That's what makes these so unique. Build on, there will be more.
 
You are really funny, you should have seen me rivet off the edge of my rivet backing plate when doing my VS.

I was going a lot faster when I began, and nearly every boo-boo was due to a lack of sync and moving a little fast. These are now recorded for historical reference and review. Paint may cover some.

This is the reason some HS and VS look like those of a glass bird. They are all covered up!

Not structural, so you could build on. Some things I could not abide with and executed a do-over. In my book, this is a leave it a go as realistically a light coat of build primer will make it fade away.

Welcome to the builders world!
 
That's hardly a dent, maybe an imperfection.

If you want to do yourself a favor take that darn blue plastic off.
To me that would be really annoying not that little ding that's got you all concerned.
The longer you wait the more difficult it gets to take it off and to make matters worse the edge curls up a bit a traps aluminum shavings that make nice scratches, much worse than your little rivet ding.
Just my opinion and it's worth only as much as you paid for it.:rolleyes:
 
Hey guys,

Thanks for talking me off the bridge and back to my work shop. It was frustrating because those were the few rivets that I set on the airplane. Somehow I was under some sort of delusion that I was going to build a "perfect" airplane. After I got that out of the way I did continue and am happy with the way that its coming out. Thanks again for all the support.

Dave
 
Wyzepilot said:
Hey guys,

Thanks for talking me off the bridge and back to my work shop. It was frustrating because those were the few rivets that I set on the airplane. Somehow I was under some sort of delusion that I was going to build a "perfect" airplane. After I got that out of the way I did continue and am happy with the way that its coming out. Thanks again for all the support.

Dave
Click to expand...

I thought I was going to build a polished plane: gave that idea up by the end of the first day.

Jim Berry
RV-10
 
I have tons of those. First one on an elevator was a shock. How could I do it I do everything perfect! Then one more somewhere on the tail then another one... there will be wings and fuselage... Flies just fine :)
 
Big Dent/Rivet gun

I made several big dents until I could get my finger trained to let off the rivet gun trigger before I pulled away from the rivet. I also turned down the pressure going to the gun so it would not hit so hard.
 
It wasn't when I riveted off the back plate while doing my rudder recently, it was when I did it the second time a few minutes later. Just as I was about to put the rivet gun to my head, an old time builder came by and told me "thats what bondo is for". Each part does build more confident in you though.
 
I truly appreciate all of your confessions. Thanks for making me feel better. I'm sure my little blunder was the first of many.

Dave
 
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