13-03 step 4 question

Hi group,

Couple of questions about this step.

First, vans says to use the drawing as a template. Should I infer that I should xerox the drawing and that it is to scale?

Second, the drawing shows hatched marks which in previous steps has had instructions to remove the material with hatched marks, but it doesn't exist here in this step, only to "smooth the edges". Did you remove the material to make the hole identical to the rear spar hole or no?

Third, instructions say to use a dremmel tool to remove material. I don't have one but I do have a step drill tool, would that work here or is the material too thick? If not, what kind of dremmel tool is appropriate here?

As always, thanks!

If I remember correctly, I placed the doubler on the rear spar and marked out the hole and trimmed out the doubler to that. The hole ended up very close to what is on the plan. I'm not sure the plan is to scale, I doubt it. I think it is only a reference as to how to cut out the hole.
I myself would not want to try and build an aircraft without a Dremmel tool. I'm on my second one, been building for 20 years. Mine has the flex cord on it and I like that as it will fit in more places.
I like it that when you have a question, you include Van's plans. Saves me from going out to the hangar and review mine.
The above is my opinion only, you may want to check with Van's. I know that on the RV-10 there was interference in that hole and some trimming later was needed. I think it was here that most people could not stop the interference and would check with Van's only to find out that once the travel stops were set, the travel would stop before touching

Thanks Ron. I just went out and bought a dremmel tool and bits.

Ok, so if I understand you correctly, I should just outline and then cut an identical hole same as the rear spar (the hatched area in the drawing should be removed).

Drilling and trimming

I marked the doubler plate using the rear spar as well. But I did use the drawing as well, making a copy and then cutting out and laying over the doubler plate to check the alignment. I then used the #30 to drill the pilot holes, then used the unibit to get the bulk of the material out of the hole, then finally used the Dremel tool. I then reclamped the doubler plate to the rear spar and used a hand file to "fine tune" the straight runs and arcs. Takes a little while, but the two openings are very well matched. Oh, and I also used the maroon scotchbrite pads to smooth the entire perimeter of the hole.

YEP, I did pretty much as 3014RV

Pushrod Hole

Tom,

I am still waiting on my wings, they will be shipped in two weeks. In the meantime, I am reading every builder's site. Besides KC and Rick, this is also a good one, http://rv-14a.blogspot.com

It looks like the pictures didn't post here, but it's a thorough explanation of what you are looking for. Here is the link on his site to see the pictures.
http://rv-14a.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2013-05-26T21:03:00-06:00&max-results=15&start=34&by-date=false

Wings. Rear spar. Section 13.
Been working on the rear spar. As part of that, you're required to build the aileron hinge bracket assemblies. These parts are not straight after having been manufactured, so into the vice they went, sandwiched between pieces of wood, and slowly worked as straight as can be. The rear spar reinforcement fork and doubler plate are also hopelessly warped. It takes a lot of time to straighten those out.

The outboard rear spar doubler plates need to have a funny-shaped hole cut into them to fit the aileron pushrods. A search of the net shows that these holes are problematic for many people in that their pushrods rub against these holes. There's no way to test them until the ailerons are installed. The plans provide templates to use to make the holes for both wings. Turns out, they're not properly scaled on the paper, so I rescaled them and printed them out. Even still, one of the rows of holes doesn't line up. But all the others do and I checked it against the spar and the pushrod template is in the right place.

I use the center punch to start those holes with a #40 and worked my way up to a 3/8", then sanity took over and I used the unibit to enlarge the holes all the way as shown in the template. The shaded areas need to be removed via some other means. My Dremel didn't have any tip that would fit the bill, so I tried to drill a series of holes to file through. This was after I wised up and used the rear spar itself to trace out the shape of the hole (the paper method was good for the center punch locations).

But there was still too much material. Off to Home Depot I went to grab a nibbler. They don't have them in the store. Amazon Prime to the rescue with $3.99 overnight shipping for a nibbler. This nifty tool made short work of the aluminum. I used this 1/8" aluminum oxide grinding stone on my Dremel to round it out. It's basically a really bad cutting stone. It melts the aluminum very slowly, making it easy work, except when you want to remove a lot of material. Then you have to be mindful of the heat generated. Next it was just smoothing all that down to look and feel pretty with sandpaper and the miraculous finishing sander. Below is the right side. The left side isn't as good. The nibbler doesn't fit at the top coming from the unmarked side (due to the flange), so I clipped just a bit too much off on one bite using the nibbler from the other side. Won't be a problem.

Thanks everyone.

In the end, after burning through several kinds of dremmel bits to get the job done, I found that the dremmel bit with "sandpaper" did the best job of fine tuning the hole the fastest.

Tom

I started this hole with the unibit, in two places, finished with the Dremel (reinforced cutting wheels)