You can rivet 90% of the rivets on an RV solo. The wing skins and some of
the fuselage skins are the primary exceptions. You need two people for
those. It amounts to about 1% or less (honest!) of the total build time.

KB


"Marco Rispoli" wrote in message
et...
I was watching "From the Ground Up" on Discovery Wings, specifically I
paid
attention to the episode where the rivet the skin on one of the wings of
the
aircraft.

in order to rivet the skin to the aircraft they use solid rivets, a rivet
gun and a "bucking bar" (did I get that right?).

The rivet is pounded by the gun on the outside while on the inside the
bucking bar bounces against the other end of the rivet flattening it
against
the inside hole.

Cool.

It took 3 people to do that: 1 to handle the gun, 1 to keep the skin "bent
up" while the other was keeping the bucking bar against the rivet.

You could reduce that to 2 people if you have the person handling the
bucking bar also bending the skin up.

My question is this (to you more experienced metal-airplane-builder
folks):
is it possible to do this "solo"? From the looks of it the answer is a big
resounding NO. I can't imagine anyone other than a contortionist with 4
arms
handling the gun, the bucking bar and keeping the wing skin out of the way
and doing a good job at it at the same time.

Right?

--
Marco Rispoli - NJ, USA / PP-ASEL
My on-line aviation community - http://www.thepilotlounge.com