In article ,
"Marco Rispoli" wrote:

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?



Wrong! It IS quite possible (and easy) for one person to do this
operation.

We use Cleco fasteners to hold the skins in place for the riveting --
usually we drill and cleco 3/32" rivets and then, if we want to go with
larger rivets, drill out to the desired size, holding the skins in place
with clecos.

On homebuilts, we can usually reach both sides of the skin, one hand
operating the rivet gun and the other hand holding the bucking bar. If
we had to use larger rivets than #3 or #4, I suppose that the job would
be more difficult.

Incidentally, we do NOT flatten the shop head, but we buck it to a
desired length & diameter and have go/no-go guages for the less
experienced riveters.

The real secret here is to take it easy and not try to rush the job or
to work while tired -- those actions usually result in mistakes.