I finished up drilling
the fuel tank attach plate nuts and this morning I began riveting
the plate nuts to the spar flange. This was pretty straight
forward, so I won't bore you with more details.
Once all the fuel tank
plate nuts were riveted to the spar, I started drilling the inspection
cover plate nuts on the bottom side of the wings. The ritual
was pretty much the same as for the fuel tank attach plate nuts.
- Make a test sample out of 0.032" aluminum for a #6 hole.
(drill, debur, and dimple).
- Drill a series of holes in the scrap aluminum angle with a
#40 drill bit.
- Eyeball center of hole and cleco into place.
When I got the countersink cutter
where I thought it should be, I noticed that the countersink cutter
was cutting all the way to the edge of the spar flange. These
plate nut holes are pretty close to the edge of the spar flange,
but I didn't expect the countersink to cut that closely. Therefore,
I went on a pilgrimage to other builders web site's. I found
a number of other builders who's holes looked the same. Anything
shallower and the test sample didn't sit flush to the spar flange.

This was again time consuming, but after
figuring out the fuel tank plate nuts, this went pretty smoothly.
However, I am not sure how Van's counts out their parts, but I was
one plate nut short (K1000-06). I will need to call Van's to
get an additional plate nut...
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