www.ruttlermills.com
jim@ruttlermills.com
You might think that assembling an aircraft requires large
and complicated tools. This is not the
case because the aircraft kits we've discussed are pretty much made for you
already. The metal is cut, bent, and the
holes are punched. What is left primarily
are some pretty routine and easy tasks of connecting everything together like a
Lego set.
I've mentioned Cleaveland tools before and they are who I
recommend for your tools. They offer a
new builder tool package for around $2500.
Here is an image of everything that is included in the tool kit and I
will talk about some of the major components here. But this is pretty much it as far as the
tools you'll need to assemble your aircraft.
So what are these tools?
Some of them may look familiar, but others almost certainly won't. Beginning in the top left is a pneumatic
drill gun with drill bits. Although the
holes are punched in the airframe parts, they are undersized. This means that you have to drill the holes
and slightly enlarge them to get them to the proper size. Hence, the drill gun and bits. These bits will take you pretty far in the
project, but eventually you'll need to get a complete drill bit set from #1-#99
drill sizes. The drill gun itself has
that cool sound that you hear in car shops and it makes you feel like a pro
when you are using it, but otherwise I found that using a good quality wireless
drill gun was easier for two reasons.
First, the pneumatic gun tends to slightly shake when you use it, which
results in slight distortions to the holes.
Second, you don't have to constantly change out the compressor hose
between it and the rivet gun. If you do
use the pneumatic drill gun, you will also need to get a quick release bit from
the local hardware store so that you can easily replace it with the rivet gun.
The rivet gun is to the right of the drill gun. It looks and sounds scary, but it is
something you can learn in under an hour.
Essentially, you hook up the rivet gun to the compressor, put on a bit,
press it against a rivet, hold a bucking bar on the other side of the rivet,
and squeeze the trigger for a few seconds.
There is an art to it, but again anybody can figure it out with a little
effort. There are a couple of rivet bits
that come with the kit and these are for the different rivets you use. Primarily there is a flat head rivet and a
round or universal head rivet, so you need two bits to rest against the head of
these different rivets. You can see
there is one curved bit, which allows you to go around slight corners and
obstructions and then there is a back-rivet bit which allows you to hit the
other side of the rivet while you hold the flat head against a metal
plate. This is a technique that the
instructions call for in rare circumstances, but it is very easy to
master.
Just below the rivet gun are various bucking bars. There is a large metal plate for the back
riveting technique and the handle bucking bar for the normal technique. This bucking bar is bigger than the one I
used and would suffice for most uses, but occasionally you'll find that a
smaller palm size bucking bar will be useful.
Further to the right is a huge C-Frame dimple tool. This tool allows you to put a little
impression in a hole so that a rivet sits flush within the hole. It is so big only because it allows you to
reach far into a sheet of metal to make the dimple. Essentially, you put the metal in the C-frame
and it the post with a mallet when the bit is in the hole you want to
dimple. Not complicated, but very
useful.
In the bottom right there is a rivet squeezer and probably
the most valuable tool you'll purchase.
This tool allows you to hand squeeze any rivet when you can reach and
pinch it. Just above it are some bits
that you can use in the rivet squeezer to squeeze various rivets: flat head and
universal head bits are the most common.
Essentially, you put the rivet in the hole and the bit on the squeezer
and then compress the handles together.
One thing that wasn't obvious to me about the rivet squeezer
when I first got it was that you also can use it to dimple. The kit comes with dimple bits and you can
put a dimple in any hole that you can reach, which saves you time from having
to use the big C-Frame dimpler. The
catch is that you've got to be able to pinch the hole using the rivet
squeezer. If the hole is more than a
couple of inches inside the edge of the metal sheet, you can't reach it and
have to turn to the C-Frame dimpler.
Just to the left of the rivet squeezer is a cleco plier tool
and various clecos - gold and silver.
What the heck is a cleco tool?
Well, remember when I said that the kits are punched and you just have
to drill to enlarge the holes? The
clecos hold the parts together securely while you drill. The way this works is that you assemble
whatever section you are working on first using clecos. So if you are working on the horizontal
stabilizer section, you put it all together with clecos in every other
hole. Then, you drill all the exposed
holes, move the clecos to the drilled holes, and then drill the holes
previously having clecos. The clecos are
very strong, so you need the cleco plier tool to insert and release the cleco
from the hole. There are two colors of
clecos because there are two primary sized holes in the Van's kits. The visible holes on the exterior of the
aircraft are silver size and the internal holes of the aircraft are the larger
gold size.
Jumping back to just below the drill gun, there is a
countersink tool and different bits. A
countersink tool does the same thing as a dimple tool, but it does it by
shaving away metal instead of bending it around the hole. With thin metal, the instructions will tell
you to dimple - obviously because if you tried to shave metal around the hole
you would simply enlarge it. When the
metal is thick, it is impossible to dimple, so you shave off a little metal
around the hole so that the rivet sits flush.
Below the countersink tool is a pop rivet gun. Yes, those are the rivets most people are
experienced with. You put the pop rivet
in the hole and slide the pop rivet gun onto the rivet post and squeeze. The RV-12 uses a lot of pop rivets, but the
-8, -10, and -14 primarily use the type of rivets that are squeezed or
bucked. There are some pop rivets in all
the kits, so you need this tool.
To the right of the pop rivet gun are some sanding and
cutting disks. I recommend just having a
Dremmel tool around for the cutting and sanding jobs. These units are perfect for small and
detailed cuts that are occasionally called for.
Finally, there are cutting shears - left and right. These are important tools that allow you to
cut relatively thin metal very easily.
Lastly, I'll mention the debur tool with the yellow handle above the
cutting shears. Every hole has to be
cleaned after it is drilled to remove and rough edges. This can be a very tedious process, so I
recommend getting a debur tool and a small handheld electric drill with a low
setting. I used a Black and Decker
handheld drill for this and it sped up the process of cleaning holes.
Some other tools that are not on the list that I would
highly recommend to make your build more efficient. The first is a belt sander. This sander will save you hundreds of hours
of manual sanding of rough edges on many of the metal parts. Next on the list is a good compressor. I had a small compressor that I used for most
of my build, but it was constantly running because its capacity was too low for
any meaningful work. Lastly, a grinder
and a drill press are also helpful, but used so infrequently that they can be
borrowed or rented when needed.
There will be other tools that you'll find you need at
various points in the project, but these are the primary tools that you use
routinely. They may be unfamiliar, but they are so simple to use that you'll find you've mastered them within only a few hours of practice.
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