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Warning: Flute Your Ribs Inward

G

Gandalf

Well Known Member
I just got off the phone with Scott at Vans and indeed there is a directionality when fluting the nose ribs. You want the indentation to point inward away from the skins. I tried reversing the flutes, but the tool is directional and only the upper part of the flute reverses. An expensive mistake.
 
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Can you not take out the bad flutes with a hand seamer and then do it the correct way? If I was careful, I found I could flute one side of one nose rib with 4 or 5 presses.

Rick
 
Rick... I tried the hand seamer, but I really can't use it on the curved sections. With your encouragement, I am going to grind down two of the pins on the fluting tool and see if I can get the flutes to reverse.
 
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Could you grind down the teeth on a pair of pliers and use them on the curved areas? Good luck with this. There has to be some way.

Rick.
 
Use your rivet squeezer with two flat sets to flatten the incorrectly oriented flute and then re-flute in the proper orientation. Try not to do this very often though, as the aluminum weakens the more you bend (and re-bend) it.

As a side note, of course the flutes have to be oriented correctly, otherwise the skins won't sit flat on the ribs.
 
alpinelakespilot2000 said:
Use your rivet squeezer with two flat sets to flatten the incorrectly oriented flute and then re-flute in the proper orientation. Try not to do this very often though, as the aluminum weakens the more you bend (and re-bend) it.

As a side note, of course the flutes have to be oriented correctly, otherwise the skins won't sit flat on the ribs.
Click to expand...

The rivet squeezer idea sounds good. I was able to grind down two of the prongs on the fluting tool and reverse the flutes. Scott reports that this is OK to do once.

I think it was pretty obvious that the flutes had to go inward once I took off the plastic and looked at the surface, but by then it was too late. It is yet another of those things that everybody knows except the novice builder. Despite completing the fundamentals class, reading the instructions, watching a sheet metal DVD and reading a number of books, not once did anyone mention any directionality for fluting! It must just be so obvious unless you have never built an airplane before :) I just go figure it could have been worse if I had not noticed the problem or asked someone for advice.

So two steps forward and one backward. I think I am going to set the record for number of hours spent building an RV wing, bypassing Jerry G :)
 
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