June 12, 2005 - Fuselage Firewall
|
|
Today I set my personal record for “most hours working on the RV in one
day”. I put in nine hours.
I started out by drilling
the aux fuel pump doubler plate. It requires two nut-plates which
complicates things. Although I have a Unibit, it was too large for this
job, going from 1/4 to 1/2. I needed a smaller Unibit, one that goes
from 1/8 to ¼. I ended up using regular drill bits, stepping up in size
incrementally from 1/8 to ¼. The quality of the hole wasn't as good
as it could have been though, so I'll be ordering a smaller Unibit tomorrow.
Here is a shot of the aux fuel pump doubler plate which I cut from
stock and drilled per the plans. This time it would be the firewall which
would get match-drilled using the doubler as a template. |
|
 |
|
|
With the drilling complete, I disassembled everything. It's
deburring time!
|
|
 |
|
|
Deburring went fine until I started on the firewall. I discovered
that the stainless steel "burrs" were tough. My regular hand
deburring tool was useless on the stainless steel and emery cloth not much
better. So I went to the net. I found a lot of posts trying to
justify not deburring at all -- unconvincingly -- but I did find one
post that suggested using the deburring bit in the electric screwdriver.
I tried my original Cleaveland deburring bit in the electric screwdriver
and it worked like a champ! I raced through all the holes on the
firewall. Here's a good shot of the deburring bit. I used Boelube
liberally while working with the stainless. |
|
 |
|
|
A happy shot after discovering the secret of deburring stainless steel.
|
|
 |
|
| What comes next after deburring.
You guessed it. Dimpling. I was able to squeeze the edge holes.
Lynnette and I used the C-frame to dimple the interior holes. The
stainless steel dimpled easily which surprised me a little bit. |
|
 |
|
| All the angle stiffeners required
countersinking, which is not my favorite activity. I'm always
wondering if I have taken too much material out, or not enough. Just got to
work through it. |
|
 |
|
| Why am I smiling? I called it
a day at 11PM whth all but two of the stiffeners countersunk. |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|