Ivan's RV-7

Short riveting sessionTimer icon2h

October 13, 2025

A short riveting session after work.

Made more progress riveting the bottom skin.

Continuing riveting the bottom skin.

Also, I riveted the nutplates for the access covers.

Access panels nutplates.

The issue with these nutplates is that my wiring bundle goes exactly over the nutplates. The wires are about 1/2" away from the screws. Since I only have three support clamps (one at the root rib, one at the tip rib, and one in the middle), the wires are not very tight. I was concerned that if they flop around enough, the threads of the screws (which are also longer than strictly necessary) would cut through the wires.

To prevent that, I printed simple anti-chafing caps for the nutplates. These caps are placed at the end of a nutplate, and when a screw is put in, it grabs the cap with about 4 threads (to make sure they don't come loose in service).

Anti-chafing caps.