Well, when I last updated y'all, I was working on the R/H waistgunner's door. I actually started working on it again yesterday and I'll pick up where we left off........
Now that the inside angles were all made, they needed to have the rivet holes made and then be clecoed in place........
Since the inner skin of the door will be screwed to the structure I've built, I needed to locate the position of the nutplates that will be installed. Pretty straight forward deal here, just draw a center line and mark the desired location of the holes, then start drilling. In this case, I used the #30 drill to make a pilot hole and then followed behind that with the UniBit to make the hole the correct size for a #10 nutplate.....
Now, the way I've normally drilled the rivet holes for a nutplate over the years has been with a nutplate jig. It's just a little tool that has a pin that fits in the hole I've just drilled and has a couple of pilot holes to locate the rivet holes with. Then you have to come back and countersink the holes so that flush rivets can be used. It works pretty well, but can be time consuming. But just recently, I acquired a new gadget that drills both rivet holes for the nutplate, along with countersinking them all at the same time! This thing looks like it's a prop from some sci-fi movie and is quite heavy, but is pretty dang cool to watch work. Whoever designed this thing sure had a lot of time on their hands, but the end result is wonderful.
I started with a piece of scrap aluminum sheet so that I could get the countersink adusted to the right depth. But before I show it to you working on the metal, I thought I'd try to give you an idea of how it works with just a "dry run." This first picture shows it in the "neutral" position......
Now with the trigger pressed, the first thing that happens is the center piece snaps down, like a cleco, to hold the tool to the metal firmly. At the same time, the two drill bits are spinning and starting to work their way through the jig fixture portion of the tool. Eventually, the drill bits come to the end of their travel and the larger portion of the bit protrudes just enough to make a couple of countersinks. These two photos show the action of it all..........
So, it was off to the practice piece to get the countersinks to the correct depth........
They weren't quite deep enough, so I simply made the adjustments required and tried again, this time with perfect results........
Now it was just the simple task of running the tool around the angles I made and in record time, all of the holes were drilled and countersunk for the nutplates.......
Next, I removed the angles and deburred them. Following that, I just installed all of the nutplates needed........
Once the nutplates were all installed, it was time to rivet all of this center structure together. Pretty straight forward work here........
I temporarily screwed the inside structure to the outer skin of the door so that I could start the manufacturing of the inner skin.......
The inner skin is just going to be some .020" material (otherwise known as "oh-too-thin"
). And to get the shape needed, I just clamped it down to the door and marked the edges with a Sharpie marker.......
And that's where I'm at on the project so far. I've started back with the long days here, so I'm hoping to get some forward progress made. Daniel, Jim, Scott, and Ellen were all working hard in my absence last week, and it shows. Maybe I should just leave more often and let them do all the work. Suits me.
Anyway, I'll try to keep y'all posted on how things progress.
Gary
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