Elevator Access Plate Woes
Walt stopped by today on his way back from the airport to answer a few questions I had and inspect the elevator. I asked him how he riveted the last 2 places on the trailing edge. He said used a special yoke with no hole. I also asked him about the access cover for the elevator trim. I used the wrong nutplates when assembling the attachments for the access cover. I discovered this AFTER I had riveted the skin on, so I was trying to decide whether or not I could just countersink the reinforcement plate about 1/32” which was about how much the access cover stuck up from the surrounding skin. Walt said that would probably be fine, but why not just put the right nutplates in? I had to agree, so that was that…
Right after Walt left, my neighbor, Noah and his two kids came over to see what’s been transpiring at the Skunk Works. I was in the process of drilling out the nutplates when they came in, so I put that project on pause and gave them a tour. Grant seemed to be interested in the whole rivet thing, so I cut up a few pieces of .032 alclad and showed him how to rivet. I taught him how to the use the squeezer to make a little souvenir. Grace was not that interested, so Noah figured it might be best for the boys to come back another day.
Back to drilling out the nutplates… Now get the right ones out of the trim kit and cleco them in. Now I have a problem… The yoke is too long. This wasn’t a problem when the skin was off, but now that the skin is on – there’s no way to position my yoke to fit INSIDE the access hole to rivet in the nutplates. I’m thinking I need one of those short yokes to solve this problem. Dang! Maybe some day I’ll have all the right tools I need. For now, I guess I’ll stop for the day.
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