Van's Air Force - Western Canada Wing

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Western Canada Wing

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Elevator Skin Dimpling

Chris Sheehan, Mississauga, ON (RV-6 tail)

Tip 1

Just use the male die in the squeezer without the female (i.e. the squeezer yoke acts as the female). That’s actually not my idea; saw it on the web somewhere but it actually works.

Tip 2

Using a ‘pop rivet’ die is tricky because it’s hard to angle the ‘mandrel’ (nail) through the hole. So I came up with the following: I used a short (2”-3”) length of 3/32” piano wire as a mandrel, and a 3/32” ‘wheel collar’ (both hobby store items). I filed a notch in the wire close to one end, fed it through the male die, rib, female die and wheel collar (in that order) and tightened the collar set screw in the notch. Now just run the pop rivet puller on the mandrel as usual, and once the dimple is formed undo the wheel collar and take it all apart. Sounds time consuming, but there are only a few dimples to do this way and it takes about 1 minute per.

Tip 3

Regardless of how you manage to make the dimple, if it’s not quite right a turn or two by hand with a piloted countersink finishes it off perfectly, barely removing any metal at all.

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