Time to finish up the right flap and clean up the shop so I have bench space to inventory the fuselage when it arrives (hopefully in the next few days). The next step was to rivet the bottom skins to the spar, so I flipped the flap top side down. The ribs need to be held flat against the bench. Last time I laid pieces of wood on the ribs and weighed them down with weights, but the weights kind of got in the way of riveting. This time I just put the wood on the ribs and screwed them down, basically pinching the rib to the bench. To try to keep the skin somewhat flat, I did the same with some wider boards.
Riveting the bottom skins to the spar went fairly quick this time around. I went up one rivet length, just like I did on the left flap because of the dimpled vs countersunk spar. Once the spar was done, I put the weights on the bottom skin and clecoed the skin to the ribs. I also put the trailing edge wedge in and clecoed it together. Last time I clecoed it to the table and waited for the tape to set, but with the method of squeezing the rivets with clecos in place, I skipped this step. I didn't really need to use the tape, but I put it in anyway, just because it helps to hold the rivets in the holes while I'm squeezing them.
I pop-riveted the main ribs to the skin and moved on to the trailing edge. This is what the rivets look like partially squeezed. This worked out great again. There was no back and forth and back and forth to try to keep the edge straight. I just kept the weights in place with the edge just off the table, then squeezed every other rivet, removed clecos, and did the rest. I did use 3-3.5 rivets again, even though the 3-3 is what is called for. The 3-3 is a little too short for my liking.
I flipped the flap over and finished up the edge using the mushroom set and the big back rivet plate. Just one second of riveting is all that was necessary to flatten the rivets the rest of the way. The trailing edge ended up perfectly straight again. I sure wish I had known about this technique when working on all of the other trailing edges!
I threw the flap up on the wing just to see what it looks like.
It nests down into the rear of the wing. The top wing skin projects over the front of the flap, and the flap gap fairing keeps there from being too much of a space for air to sneak through. The flap was just sitting there for this picture, so it won't sit down on the rear wing spar like this when it's bolted on.
All of the control surfaces are done now. I'm not going to bother fitting the flaps to the wing until much later in the build. I don't see any reason to fit anything just to take it apart and then final fit it again down the road (after final fitting it still has to be taken apart for painting). That's why I didn't fit the tail surfaces together yet. I'll do that once the fuselage is largely done.
