Matt's RV-7 Project

In Saturday's post I idly wondered why Van's was having me drill the hole in the front spar for the trim motor wiring so close to a preexisting tooling hole. We'll I'll tell you why it looked weird: because I had accidentally grabbed the rear spar and happily drilled a giant hole through it instead, thus ruining it. Arrgh. That's what I get for not triple-checking the plans and the part numbers. Of course it doesn't help that the instructions don't even mention this particular hole - I guess they're hoping that you'll notice the tiny callout on the plans, but whatever. At least the replacement HS-603PP is only eighteen bucks. I'm going to be out of town for a week anyway, so it's not that much of a setback other than the couple hours it will take me to drill, deburr, dimple, and prime a new spar. Bah.

Today I got the HS parts all dimpled - used the Cleaveland tank dimple dies (which arrived Saturday) on the ribs and spars, and it does seem to make the skin dimples sit down in there better. Then I went out in the backyard and primed all the ribs, spars, bars, and angles while Mary and her folks hung out inside.

Probably they were discussing my warped priorities.

Who needs Star Wars when you're building an RV?

Luke, I am your father!

The in-laws were in town today, but I kept sneaking out to the garage to work on the plane project here and there. Got all the horizontal stabilizer parts deburred, and drilled the trim wiring hole in the left front spar. I wonder why they have you drill this hole right next to a perfectly workable tooling hole - it could just be enlarged and put to use if they'd put it in the right location.

Update: This was a stupid mistake! See here for details.

Based on recommendations from other builders, I ordered a set of 3/32" tank dimple dies from Cleaveland. I didn't like the way the dimpled skin and substructure were fitting together, and these are supposed to be useful for fixing that little cosmetic issue as well as for building fuel tanks. We shall see.

Update: The package with the set of dimple dies in it arrived promptly, but contained… only the female half of the die set. Not so useful. I called Cleaveland on the phone, and they said they'll send me another set ASAP. Good customer service.