Still thinking about an RV-14

Yeah, it's not uncommon for my hands to be beat up, but sheetmetal work provides SO MANY unique opportunities for new cuts and holes. I got lucky yesterday; the drill bit hit my fingernail instead of tearing a hole in the flesh like the last two times.
 
The first part of the build on a RV almost always goes the quickest for a variety of reasons. As the build progresses and the assemblies become more complex, require not included components, and/or offer opportunities for modifications off plans, the pace tends to slow down. The key is to chip away at it as often as you can and also not to succumb to indecision paralysis over mods and aftermarket components.
 
Jim K said:
Yeah, it's not uncommon for my hands to be beat up, but sheetmetal work provides SO MANY unique opportunities for new cuts and holes. I got lucky yesterday; the drill bit hit my fingernail instead of tearing a hole in the flesh like the last two times.
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Gotta build up them calluses.
 
Jim K said:
Bandaids are for people who don't have duck tape and blue shop towels on hand ;)
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If blue painter's tape doesn't hold it CA glue will.

I'm struggling to resist ranting about what the manual has become.

Nauga,
and kids these days
 
Hit a couple milestones yesterday/today.

Used fuel tank sealant for the first time to make a fillet against the elevator rear spar. This is a kludge by Van's to prevent cracks found in this part on 10s & 14s. Elevators are probably 2/3 done.

Got the nutplates Van's shorted me, which was holding up progress on the rudder, and the next step on the elevators. This allowed me to rivet the rudder trailing edge. That's the first trailing edge in the project and probably the hardest and most visible, or so I hear. Turned out great.

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Next was the leading edge, something that I found extremely difficult on the practice kit. I'm not going to say it's beautiful, but it's decent and it fits. Of course halfway through I figured out the trick, so on my next RV-14...

That completes the rudder, which allowed me to hang it on the VS and have my first (sort of) functioning parts.

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I really need to take my foot off the gas a little as other responsibilities are getting put off. It's just so fun though...
 
AV8R_87 said:
What was the ratio of sealant on the spar vs your hands and clothes?
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I was really proud of myself. I managed to stay completely clean. The sealant was in one of those little pre measured caulk tubes so that helped. The spar is about 12" down inside the skins, and you have to make a 3/8 alum. tube to apply it through. The fact I was applying it a foot down in a hole probably helped too. I'm sure it will be a different story when I'm buttering ribs to build the fuel tanks.
 
keen9 said:
That doesn't count as having used tank sealant then!
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Feel like maybe I earned it tonight.

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They have you apply the fillets, then rivet the front spars in. Then, they say to do the two fillets they told you not to before because that part of the skin wasn't riveted yet. Had i known that, i would've tried to get it all done with one tube, in one day. Because I don't want to buy another expensive tube, I dug the mostly cured but not totally hard tube out of the trash and cleaned it out so I could refill it out of the quart can. And yes, I got it everywhere. But I think it's good enough it'll work.

Another item of interest today...I screwed up the piano hinge on the trim tab, so I ordered replacement from Spruce since Van's takes a solid week to process orders. It showed up today in one of the most impressive packing jobs I've ever seen.

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Speaking of Van's, I decided to check on HS ribs that were backordered from my kit. The online store showed them in stock, so I called. She pulled up the inventory sheets (which they must scan, i guess) and saw the note on there, but said no one had put it into the computer that I needed them. To her credit, she got them shipped out today, but it appears there's still lots of room to improve inventory management at Van's.

Explored a little bit about home-rolling an IO-390 today as well. Apparently any 360 case can be modified pretty cheaply for the 390 cylinders. It'd be pretty cool to get the 390 performance for the cost of rebuilding a 360.
 
AV8R_87 said:
You have the early wing, or the later one with the honeycomb ribs prosealed to the skin?
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neither. the plans actually have a third option of conventional metal ribs. With each honeycomb rib being almost $100 (last time I checked) I decided on plan C. several others have gone metal ribs... there is a full build report (not mine) online linked from the bd-4 forum
 
they are conventional metal ribs glued to the skin. I'll post a photo after work.
 
Rcmutz said:
Is that what you think of the build/instruction manual?
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Ha, no the manual is pretty amazing. About once every 10 pages or so there'll be a nasty surprise, but usually reading ahead would've solved that, so I guess that's on me. I was a little mad though because I had to drill a rivet out of a tight spot, and the bit just caught my finger and sliced it pretty good (obviously).

The one thing that drives me nuts is they'll have you build an assembly, and instead of using the name of the assembly, they'll still use the part numbers. You wind up with a string of five part numbers, like "HS-00903, HS-00912, HS-00900B, HS-00913, and HS-00901" and it makes me go a bit cross-eyed.

Otherwise it's very much "adult Legos" with a much cooler toy when you're done.
 
pfarber said:
That's a lot of rivets, glad my BD-4 is glued together, mostly.
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It is a lot of rivets, but in this example, nearly every one on the perimeter was set with pneumatic squeezer, and the skin rivets in the middle were all back riveted, both of which go really fast. I bet there's not an hour of riveting all together. The time is in part prep, which is a shame because the riveting is the fun part.

I'm curious about what kind of adhesive you use to build the BD. Van's uses tank sealant as glue in a number of places, but I'd assume that if you're building the whole airplane out of the stuff, there's some sort of structural epoxy? Hopefully something that sets faster than tank sealant?
 
Jim K said:
I'm curious about what kind of adhesive you use to build the BD. Van's uses tank sealant as glue in a number of places, but I'd assume that if you're building the whole airplane out of the stuff, there's some sort of structural epoxy? Hopefully something that sets faster than tank sealant?
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Be careful here. Typically where Vans calls out the use of sealant as purely an adhesive it’s really being used as a liquid cleco vs actually structurally bonding pieces together. There are plenty of proseal substitutes in the aircraft aisle at Home Depot that will work just fine in that regard. What you want is something that doesn’t dry/cure rock hard but remains somewhat flexible.
 
Racerx said:
Maybe he should just send me the kits. (At a used discount) Since he's apparently in over his head.
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I need to dig out the -6 plans and give him a "back in the day" story. I swear, you built the RV-6's wings in about 4 pages of text and probably 15 pages of dimensioned and orthogonal drawings. The real challenge was to make sure you assembled things in a sequence that didn't block you from doing something later in the build. 'Cause Van's didn't put most of that stuff in the plans - you had to look ahead and put some thought into it.
 
kyleb said:
I need to dig out the -6 plans and give him a "back in the day" story. I swear, you built the RV-6's wings in about 4 pages of text and probably 15 pages of dimensioned and orthogonal drawings. The real challenge was to make sure you assembled things in a sequence that didn't block you from doing something later in the build. 'Cause Van's didn't put most of that stuff in the plans - you had to look ahead and put some thought into it.
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Whole lotta RV's built using Randall Henderson's supplemental instructions and the Matronics RV-list. After the tail kit I don't think I bothered with the Van's "instructions."

OTOH, I thought the plans were pretty good for the most part. Hand drawn and lettered, of course, but clear and thorough enough to scratch-build from. You're spot on about the lack of sequencing, though.

Nauga,
the North Plains rambler
 
nauga said:
Whole lotta RV's built using Randall Henderson's supplemental instructions and the Matronics RV-list. After the tail kit I don't think I bothered with the Van's "instructions."

OTOH, I thought the plans were pretty good for the most part. Hand drawn and lettered, of course, but clear and thorough enough to scratch-build from. You're spot on about the lack of sequencing, though.

Nauga,
the North Plains rambler
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The plans were pretty good if you could read drawings. If not, I guess you learned, quit, or ended up with yard art. The "Cliff's Notes" for building the RV-6 were "The Bunny's Guide", by Frank van der Hulst. Very helpful, as were a lot of build logs in those days. Van's didn't go into a lot of detail, but some builders did.

 
kyleb said:
I need to dig out the -6 plans and give him a "back in the day" story. I swear, you built the RV-6's wings in about 4 pages of text and probably 15 pages of dimensioned and orthogonal drawings. The real challenge was to make sure you assembled things in a sequence that didn't block you from doing something later in the build. 'Cause Van's didn't put most of that stuff in the plans - you had to look ahead and put some thought into it.
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Heh. I remember when we were building the -7A (c.2002), a few of what we called "old-timers" (I guess people would call us old-timers now) chuckled and said "Oh man.. Those things just fall out of the box and assemble themselves these days! Back when I built my -4.....". It would be interesting to hear what they say about the new kits today that you don't even have to redrill.
 
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