26-17 to 19 Step Attach Assemblies
I’ve decided to include the steps since as I get older I’ll probably need all the help I can get to clamber up onto the wing!
Because of the acute angles in these assemblies the riveting proved quite challenging.
The Step Attach Weldments are powder coated, and seem quite well made.
The nutplate attach holes have to be machine countersinked … be careful if using your countersink cage, the flanges are narrow and it’s easy to overdo it at the end holes. One of mine turned out a bit deep : (
Step Attach Rib Doublers and nut plates are attached to the F-01495-L & -R Step Attach Ribs … easy so far.
Order of construction?
When attaching all the components to the ribs it all gets harder, due to the restricted access to set the rivets.
The manual asks you to rivet on the Step Attach Weldments first, but if you do this it’ll be harder to set the rivets on the back of the Step Attach Ribs.
As you see in this picture I reversed the suggested order & I’m able to easily get a bucking bar on the shop heads without the weldments in the way.
Thanks to my fellow RV14 builder in Scotland for this Top Tip!
Once the other ribs have been riveted access is still available to set the weldment rivets in the acute angle …
… two of them are Cherry Rivets anyway. In fact you have the option to use Cherries for all the weldment rivets, but I found it OK to use 470’s in the suggested locations as in the previous picture.
These were the first Cherry Rivets I’ve set in the build, so I did a bit of reading up about them. But they proved very easy to set with my pneumatic pop riveter at medium pressure. This tool certainly makes it easy to keep correct alignment during the pull.
And on the other side of the weldments access is OK to use the squeezer.
Side Frames
I riveted on the F-01458B-L & -R Side Frame Brackets to the F-01458-L & -R Side Frames before attaching them to the ribs. This allowed easy access to set the 470’s with the manufactured head on the flanges of the Brackets.
The other rivets are easy peasy LP4-3’s : )
Squeezing the little 470’s to attach the brackets to the rib
Anyway, here are the side assemblies completed ready to attach to the bulkhead and skin … that’s the next job!
