Scott's RV-14 Build

Side Skin Dimpling

A long, tedious day deburring and dimpling the aft fuselage side skins. The 2 skins are large, nearly 8' long, flimsy and unwieldy. That's a lot of linear feet to deburr. And there are has hundreds of dimples, many of which are on a curved surface. So using a reduced size female dimple is needed to avoid distorting the metal on the curves. Correctly orienting the skins on the dimpling table to accommodate the curved portions was challenging while working solo. Since the skins are so long I had to set up my sawhorses to support them adjacent my workbench. Progress was slow, but steady. I had the opportunity to use my new Main Squeeze hand squeezer recently acquired from Cleaveland Tool. At $335 it was expensive but I felt It was a tool that would come in handy at times. I like the control I have with it and its ability to fit in areas that my pneumatic squeezer won't. Got the right skin nearly done and will move on the left one tomorrow. There's also a bunch of countersinking in store on some longerons.

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