Aileron Pushrods

While I have an aileron in the fixture ready to rivet the top skin, and the left wing ready to finish riveting I found myself at a stopping point.  My riveting partner has been super busy at work the last few days and hasn't had the time to jump in.  Not to worry though because there are lots of other things to work on like the push rods.   Hopefully this weekend we can put an hour or so into riveting the wing top skin..

Until then, I am very happy how my pushrods are going.  I cleaned and primed the inside last night, let them dry for 24 hours, then moved to the tough part..   I think lots of builders have troubles with the powder coated steel ones, but mine went together just fine.  I was able to use the squeezer with regular yoke and slim sets to squeeze the size 11 rivets.  I have seen sites where builders mess up the coating or mess up the rivet and have to start over.  Luckily mine turned out pretty well.  I also rigged up a quick make shift tube centering jig for my drill press.  I had some extra angle laying around and just drilled it into a 2x4...  From the results it worked pretty good.

I also went to work on the long tube pushrods at least getting them started.  These guys don't use long rivets, but rather pop rivets and have six of them on each end.  I used the jig, drilled 3 holes all the way through the tube, creating the six holes necessary.  A little template on graph paper gave me the starting points.  Not perfect, but definitely good enough to fool most anyone.  ;-)  (just jokes..  It turned out really good..)  I haven't primed these inside or out so will focus on that tomorrow.