Zenith Aircraft Builders and Flyers
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nut plates, dimplers and squeezers.
Forum query....
I will be doing access panels on a 750...anyone doing the dimpling thing? How are people doing the nut plates and associated rivets? Have been "researching" on Van's RV website - all looks a bit pricey for the tools and the minimal amount of riveting I will need to accomplish. Open to all thoughts and suggestions.
Cheers!
Dave
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Ronald Steele on
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I had the same thoughts/issues. After doing it 10 wrong ways, I was able to borrow a rivet squeezer from a friend. If you can't do that, I recommend buying one. It will save a lot of time, and even more frustration. The dimple dies etc are relatively cheap. Get small diameter squeezer dies as you will be working on nut plates and a larger diameter die make it hard to fit it squarely onto the rivet due to interference from the protruding nut part of the plate.
Once you have the squeezer you may find a lot of other uses for it. I'm building a 601 and a common thing to do with it is to use nut plates instead of rivets on the top of the instrument panel, to make it removable for access to the rear of the panel. There are lots of other places to use them too. I put nut plates with flush rivet inside my wing tips to fasten the lights to. This makes the entire light assembly removable from outside.
On a related note, I found the nut plates supplied by Zenith impossible to position accurately. They have a captive nut that moves around inside the plate. I bought the one piece kind, from Spruce and have had much better luck. With these you drill the hole for the bolt to just the size of the bolt, screw on the nut plate and then drill the rivet holes right through the plate. You can't miss. With the Zenith supplied plates, the whole thing moves around and you end up with a mess. The one piece plates are also cheaper.
Ron
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Permalink Reply by Bruce Cobo on
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I installed my access panel nutplates with solid rivets and rivet squeezer. As Ronald did, I used the 1 piece nutplates and it worked great. As a scratch builder the squeezer comes in handy in other places too. My homepage has some pictures of this.
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Permalink Reply by David J. Beaulieu on
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Bruce,
Did you countersink the wing skin or use a dimpler? On the Vans RV website most everyone talks of using an "oops" rivet (NAS 1097) and doing just a bit of heavy deburring on the rivet head side. I think our wing skins are a bit too thin at .020" - if you could a pic or more detail of the process would be great!
Dave
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Dave,
I countersunk the skin then filed the inside flat so the nutplates were flush with the surface. Not sure if that is the right way but it worked. I used solid CS rivets because I had them and the dimple is really quite small to get the head to fit flush. Your 'Oops method' sounds like it would work too.
Bruce
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Bruce, thanks! I went to your page and looked at your photos - nicely done. I'll get it figured out, but I sure do appreciate picking other builder's brains! Good luck with your build!
Dave
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Permalink Reply by Gary Lee Weber on
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I used a "simple dimple" die along with the hand rivet puller to dimple the skins. Then use a predimpled tinnerman nutplate and 3/32 countersunk cherry rivets. Very inexpensive (63 cent total each plate) and worked great. All the parts came from Aircraft Spruce.
-T6X8B 6 X 1/2 B TRUSS PHIL SMS $0.06
-CCC-32 CHERRY RIVET SS $0.09
-A6195-6Z-1D TINNERMAN NUT $ 0.39
-12-00613 AVERY POP RIVET DIMPLER $24.75
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Gary,
Thanks for the detailed list of materials. Will research a bit more and see what I can do. I like all the solutions I've heard about so far...
Dave
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O.K.
Got a squeezer and 3/32 dimple die and went to town on a piece of scrap. good results with the type nutplate I had (K1100) dimpled fixed nutplate. I really like the idea of using a nutplate with only the rivet holes dimpled. Is there such a thing i could order? I also like the idea of a tinnerman type nutplate (cheaper) but I think more than adequate for light weight access panels. Anyone think of any significant downsides?
Dave
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David,
The part number I gave for the tinnerman style nutplates have the rivet holes only dimpled. I agree that tinnerman type should be more than adequate for securing access plates.
Gary
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Permalink Reply by John Austin on
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Funny but true ...
I had my good friend Rainer over to help with some maintenance. He's an A&P and has built about 4 planes. He saw my wing finger screen inspection plates installed per Zenith plans and just couldn't stand it! He abandoned helping me on whatever we were doing, drilled-out my Avex rivets holding the nut plates, whipped out his pneumatic squeezer, dimpler dies and some solid rivets, and proceeded to re-do both sides. The plates now fit flush to the skin and look great! Glad to have a Type A friend! HA!
John
N750A
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John, kinda know what your talking about. I have a brother-in-law who did aircraft sheet metal for a long time and is a talented craftsman in just about everything he does with his hands. When he gives me "suggestions" on what I may want to do with a problem area, my eyes semi-glaze (though I am listening to him) as I realize his simple fixes would take me a couple of years of hands on training and practice to remotely come close to what he is suggesting as a fix. I'm at the point I can figure out how to do nice dimpling and get some nut plates properly positioned, but not much further.
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Permalink Reply by Fred Stratman on
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I do my dimpling with a hand dimpling pliers from Aircraft Tool Supply
http://www.aircraft-tool.com/shop/detail.aspx?PRODUCT_ID=7073
Its intuitively easy to use and uses any size dimple dies.
If you choose to use the pop dimple die ATS has it for about six bucks.
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