Dimple Die Modification

Thursday I found and replaced the run capacitor, a $20 part, so the A/C is working fine now.  In addition the drill bits and dimple die set came in, so was able to take care of Page 6-6 Steps 1 - 7, which involved slightly enlarging some holes in the skin and dimpling some others.  Step 8 was interesting as it required grinding down one side of a dimple die in order to dimple 16 nut plates before riveting them onto the V-stab skin.  Here's a picture of a 3/32" dimple die set welded to the business end of a pair of vice grips:

For making small dimples in aluminum this clever modification of regular pair of vice grips is easier than using the dimple dies with the large clumsy rivet squeezer.  Clumsy when I use it anyway.   However, because of the diameter of the die, there was an obstruction problem trying to dimple the nut plates as shown in this somewhat blurry picture [this is what things look like close-up without my reading glasses].

After getting permission from the coworker who loaned me the tools I ground off one side of the female die with the grinding wheel so that I could dimple the nut plates.

Modification complete.

And now it fits!  The nut plate dimples (and their matching dimples on the skin) will fasten together better with the small flush rivets I used earlier.

And 16 nut plates were dimpled in no time.

And now I fasten the nut plates onto the V-stab skin before riveting the skin onto the V-stab skeleton.  Here's what that looks like using the Main Squeeze rivet squeezers.