Riveting Of Fuselage Bottom Skin Completed

Due to Hoiday preparations and getting the snow blower ready for the season’s first major snow storm, the last couple of work sessions in the DOG Aviation production facility have been abbreviated. The riveting of the RV-12’s F-1276 fuselage bottom skin continued as planned. All the rivet holes aligned nicely … so apparently having the fuselage on its side as opposed to being upside down on saw horses did not create any adverse issues.

Continuing with the riveting of the F-1276 bottom skin onto the fuselage skeleton.

 

For being a relatively small structure, there sure are a whole lot of rivets set into the F-1276 fuselage skin. Every rivet set into the bottom skin was a flush pop rivet as opposed to the low profile dome shaped LP4-3 pop rivets.

Setting a flush pop rivet into the F-1276 fuselage bottom skin with the pneumatic rivet puller … only a few more rivets to set and the bottom skin riveting will be completed.

Because of the way the fuselage was on its side, decided it best to first rivet the majority of the bottom skin in place prior to riveting the F-1274L corner skin. Prior to setting rivets in the rivet holes common to both the F-1276 bottom skin and F-1274L corner skin, the alignment was rechecked and then the parts were riveted together. After that, the rivets common to the F-1274L corner skin and the tabs on the F-1275A skin were riveted together. Because the fuselage was on its side, to gain access to the F-1274R corner skin’s rivet holes, the forward portion of the fuselage was slid over the edge of the bench and the same procedure was followed for the F-1274R corner skin that was used on the left corner skin.

To casual observers of the Blog, the following two photos may look like ones posted last week … and they are, but now the fuselage assembly has a bottom skin attached.

Aft view of the fuselage assembly with bottom skin riveted in place.

Forward view of the fuselage assembly with newly attached bottom skin riveted in place.