Scott's RV-14 Build

Rear Glass Progressing

Spent the past two days in the shop working on the rear glass. I've spent a lot of hours on it and am ready to move on to something else. Yesterday I finished countersinking the rear glass. 31 total holes and every one had me on edge as I slowly progressed through them. My previous post was in error in that these rear edge countersinks needed to be significantly larger and deeper to handle the overlying skin dimple. The front edge is just accommodating a #6 screw head. I got them done and they all came out fine. Keeping the garage around 85 degrees seems to help. Then I spend time sanding and rounding all the glass edges with 400 grit paper to remove any scratches or toolmarks that could cause a stress riser and lead to a crack. I'll finish it up with 600 grit paper. Today I moved back to the fuselage and finished riveting the upper side skins to the forward fuselage. I had four challenging pulled rivets on the rollbar that needed to be pulled at a pretty acute angle due to rivet puller access. I used my heavily modified hand puller and a special tool made from a scrap piece of trailing edge angle with a hole drilled in it to accept the rivet mandrel. This setup allowed me to set the rivet with the puller not perpendicular to the rivet and still have a nice flush head. I've used this setup before with success. I also drilled out the skin holes to #27 in preparation for dimpling. A few more things and I'll finally have the rear glass behind me. I'll wait for the final install down the road, to allow for easier fuselage access.

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