Building a Van's Aircraft RV-7 Rudder

we're going to start this puppy up clear prop [Music] and welcome back to tip of the week our last few tips we have been contrasting the various aircraft kit manufacturers we started with a Zenith and then we went to a Sonic's tail kit and most recently we had the construction of a Zen air float kit well this week we're switching to the popular vans aircraft and their rv7 rudder in particular now what's interesting with this kit is we're dealing with a different type of aluminum 20:24 and there's quite a bit of solid riveting involved also so sit back and watch and learn and discover the differences and the different tools and techniques for this kit and see if this is something you might enjoy vans offers a wide variety of aircraft that used this very same construction technique that you're about to watch [Music] this video has been considerably sped up from its original airing so that we can get through the entire rudder build in short order what's nice about this video demonstration is this process and these tools and procedures are exemplary of most of vannes aircraft product line all of their different aircraft kits except for the AR v12 which is exclusively almost pop riveted this has a lot more of our solid rivets in this example we are selectively peeling away the protective coating so that we can prevent the surface from being scratched while riveting along those rivet holes here are the stiffeners which we are preparing and by just following the directions we're gonna make trim marks and then use our sheet metal shears to cut them to shape [Music] and with any sharp edges we're going to take them to our 3m buffing wheel and clean up those edges these stiffeners all are pre-drilled you see the holes in them and they will very nicely match with the skins at the appropriate locations where we can CLE chol them in place and then drill them out to final size and after we complete this for all of the stiffeners both skins we are now ready for riveting we're gonna first deburr all of our holes after drilling then we're going to dimple using this dimpling tool because we're gonna have flush rivets in place so this will have to be done on both these stiffeners and the skin itself and also for the skin we will use our dimpling tool and as the proper dimple dies in it for the rivets we're going to use and of course the video that runs at normal speed has all of the audio details in place if you're actually going to build one of these rv7 rudders then simply purchase the inexpensive DVD from our website and you will get all of the details and of course it'll run at normal speed will take much longer here we're setting our rivets in place and then we're going to tape them in place with our special tape there is no adhesive in the middle so it's simply gonna hold these rivets so that we can flip it upside down and we'll put our bar behind we're actually going to rivet the business end of the rivet and makes it very easy and relatively fast to set these rivets very precisely [Music] and we can remove our tape the tape simply held the rivets in place while we were riveting and we'll move on and continue the process for all of the others stiffeners we can also check our rivets with our rivet gauge to make sure that we have squashed or squeezed them enough and not too much and that comes with experience [Music] and we move on to the rudder skeleton and notice that the majority of holes have been pre-drilled we simply line them up and we drill them to final size in this case that large hole will be back drilled so that we can put a bolt in there [Music] the instructions are wonderful it takes a step-by-step through each procedure and we're also dealing with 2024 that's the designation for this aluminum which is quite different from the 6061 that was used in the Sonics and the scene of kids the two different types of aluminum have their pros and cons but they need to be used as per the designer because of their different strengths and other metal qualities [Music] all the parts are numbered even the shim which we're going to put in place here [Music] we mark and cut and we cut large so we can go back and trim right up to the line but using very simple hand tools [Music] and of course notice we peel the protective coating off prior to riveting [Music] and this rib has a bowl in it it's not flat so we use some fluting pliers and they basically crimp or actually shrink the metal and that brings the alignment back into straight and flat very simple procedure and in a moment we're going to rivet all of this together now the rivets inside the skeleton here do not have to be the flush type because there is no aerodynamic issues inside so we will be using the universal rivets momentarily [Music] and there will be a skin of course on each side of the skeleton [Music] and all of the holes need to be drilled up to final size [Music] if this type of construction looks like something you would like to do you can rest assured that the rest of the aircraft essentially goes together in a similar manner the parts are different sizes but the drilling the cutting the riveting the deburring is all essentially the same and in a moment we'll see more riveting using our hand squeezer and that's what we have right here now actually we're doing the dimpling into the thicker material using a hand tool this same tool will let us change its dies and we can go from dimpling to riveting and we're dimpling the thin metal skin with our dimpling tool and here's the dim pleure in our hand tool here's a another dim pleure much simpler but we're using it because the space becomes very cramped and down here where it's very narrow [Music] and of course the whole point of this dimpling is so that we can use our flush rivets so that the top of the rivet is flush with the surface of the material and that's an example of a rivet gauge to check that we've squeezed it properly so here are some examples of rivets that are not the flush type because they don't need to be [Music] so using the hand Riveter can be much simpler than using the pneumatic Riveter that we're going to use right now using the bucking bar if we use the pneumatic Riveter of course we have to use a bucking bar but there are times when our hand Riveter simply cannot get into some of the locations so a combination of the hand Riveter and the pneumatic Riveter are used as necessary here's an example of a pop rivet which is used every once in a while and that's where we simply cannot get to the back side of the rivet which is always necessary for our solid rivets so the Vans aircraft use uses all the different types of fasteners solid rivets pop rivets nuts and bolts here we see we're putting a let weight into the rudder and this is because this is going to be a balanced surface [Music] so that along the pivot point of the rudder as it rotates from left to right it is in fact balanced now here's another rivet set that we're going to use for flush riveting will have a bucking bar on the backside [Music] so everything is one step at a time following the directions [Music] and of course as I mentioned all the details the audio details are available during this construction with the full-length version of this video on DVD but that is not necessary for you to get the overall view of what is necessary to put this together if you are actually building one then of course I would suggest the step by step explanations [Music] actually right now we're using the bar you notice behind the rivet and then also the squeezing hand Riveter [Music] and of the top cap [Music] now we need to curl the leading edge and we'll use a pole to help us add a curl to it and then eventually we're going to overlap these two edges and rivet them together [Music] and finally the trailing edge is comprised of a wedge and we need to countersink the holes because we will have flush rivets and that will come in between where the two side skins come together and form a very nice finished edge [Music] and finally the fiberglass cap goes into the top is drilled and riveted [Music] van's makes a very nice product and not too difficult to build we hope this video was encouraging in that regard to show that you can do it [Music] now if you made it this far and watch that whole rudder being constructed then maybe you just might be a vans potential builder and with that back to building you

Channel: HomebuiltHELP

Views: 21,774

Keywords: Vans Aircraft, RV-7, Rudder workshop, how to build a Vans aircraft, Vans RV-7, Vans RV-12, Riveting, experimental aircraft, homebuilt aircraft, Homebuilthelp, Tip of the Week, building a Vans aircraft, building RV-7, solid rivets, Vans aircraft kit, Vans how to video, RV-8, RV-9, RV-10, RV-12

Id: eJdkM79BsS4

Length: 19min 31sec (1171 seconds)

Published: Fri May 24 2019