Machine Countersinking

Lots of holes to machine countersink, made easier with the little jig from Cleaveland. I machined flush plus 0.007″ as per section 5 advice.

Edge Break

I carefully “broke” the rear edges of the nose skin and TE of the skins. Took a bit of thought to work out how to anchor the workpieces!

Dimpling

Due to the angle of the spar flanges it wasn’t possible to use my DRDT2. No snags with the squeezer though … there was enough clearance to use the normal diameter female dimple.

Most of the nose skin holes were reachable with the DRDT2 …

… apart from some holes near the front, but the squeezer just reached.

Last but by no means least, front & TE dimples on the skins. Normally I dimple prior to priming, but as previously mentioned, the front skin holes were left un-dimpled to improve the accuracy of the TE match drilling. But the skins had to be primed before the stiffeners were riveted. Dimpling the primed holes seemed to work just fine, & I know lots of people do this as a matter of course.

Remaining aileron parts primed all ready for assembly.

TE Adhesive Tape

I spent an hour one evening, in the warm comfort of our lounge, applying the 3M F9460PC Adhesive Tape to the flap and aileron TE wedge pieces. Since the TE sticks out beyond the skins by a little bit, I left a little gap with no tape on that part of the wedges. Note I have primed the wedges as previously discussed, but will be attempting to keep the TE straight whilst riveting by clecoing it to a length of straight aluminium angle. Hence I’m not just relying on the bond to prevent distortion.