I’ve been buying more tools lately. Now I have SIX air tools, where I once had 1! Not pictured is a small spray gun I plan to use to prime parts. I’ve also picked up some more clecos (now I have about 30% of the total I need), a double-bend rivet set, a better set of 1/8″ dimple dies (Spring Back this time, not the cheap ones I bought with my squeezer pliers). Oh yeah…some squeezer pliers…
I also picked up a couple 1″ polishing wheels. One of the builders on YouTube was using one, and I thought it was a great idea for deburring smaller work pieces. He also had an angle die grinder, upon which he placed a 2″ deburring wheel, which also looked very handy. So, I went out and bought one of those too.
You spend a lot of time deburring things. You can’t have too many deburring devices!
What else? Hmm.. Oh, yes. I picked up a box of 20 magenta Scotch Brite pads for preparing the Alclad surfaces for priming. Remember how I bought 3 rattle cans of primer? I’m going to try that on this small project and see how it turns out. Chances are very good that it’ll work, but it won’t be feasible to use rattle cans to prime an entire plane without spending as much as a gallon of good spray-on primer (the cans are $8/ea, and the AZCO primer is about $200 for a gallon).
To round off the last 2 rounds of shopping:
- Cleco clamps (10 1/2″, 10 1″)
- Flush rivet assortment pack
- Back rivet plate
- More cobalt drill bits
I’ve also improved the “workshop” a bit by buying a second 24″ x 48″ x 78″ 5-shelf metal shelving unit, and a set of 3 LED lights that I put under the existing cabinets I have on the wall, just above my 8′ work table.
The Cleco clamps are pretty cool! they use the same cleco pliers to place, and are just mini metal clamps:
