Van's RV-15 Build Series — Episode 15: Getting Some Skin in the Game

Added: 2026-05-07

[00:00:04]Hello everybody. Welcome back into the hanger and our vans RV15 project. It's a rainy day. We go from needing the hood because it's cold to needing the hood because it's raining. But things are greening up here in Iowa. Spring. No.

[00:00:18]How's that saying go?

[00:00:21]Hope springs eternal. That's it. Just like baseball seasons here. Things are green. We are going to build some skins or put some skins on the wings. It is time. We're still waiting for that flat bracket that uh is made of unobtanium.

[00:00:37]Still not here. So, we're going to move forward. I think we can get the skins on without needing it anyway. So, we are going to do that. Here we go.

[00:00:45]So, skipping around a little bit. We're going back in time. Section 31, wing skins. 34 pages here in this section. And so it's a big one. We'll start pulling parts all the way up to the top shelf.

[00:01:03]Wondered when we were going to get here.

[00:01:25]All parts are accounted for for the left wing.

[00:01:33]Fills the table up pretty good. A few small parts. Pedo attach. That's the for the light landing light and nose rib.

[00:01:44]Five. These are the bottom skins here.

[00:01:46]Uh mostly I should say. And then there's a couple top skins there that you can't see. And of course, that's the leading edge.

[00:01:55]Guess what we get to do now? You guessed it. That's hours of prepping, removing some red, maybe deburring some edges, maybe some holes. I don't know.

[00:02:07]We'll see what we have time for. Let's get after it.

[00:02:11]So, as I'm here prepping parts, I thought about these flap brackets. I'm missing the mid attach bracket, but I have the two outside ones. By the way, these are absolutely gorgeous parts, anodized perfectly. Anyway, I thought, well, before I'll put skins on, let's get that step knocked out. If nothing else, then it's done. So, obviously, that one's just mocked up in there. But that one I will put in. And then this one goes here like so in between those two.

[00:02:46]Something like so. So the one we're missing yet is still backorded is the one that goes in here. The mid uh flap attach bracket I think they call that.

[00:02:58]So anyway, not really related to the skins, but I thought I'd capture it anyway. I'm gonna get uh those are universal rivets that go in there in in that end. And then in this end, we'll get those two beautiful anodized parts put in.

[00:03:18]After trying every tool, every yolk, the lingeron yolk and the squeezer, I finally smartened up and just uh drove them with the old 3x rivet gun. That did the job. So, we're good. We've got I did I was able to get I don't know, eight on the easy one. The easy ones down there. Easy because it uh you have access to both sides or access to the top more than anything. This one I ended up using the rivet gun on probably half of them and it it does a great job. Looks really good. So, they are both in. There's your other one.

[00:04:02]Two flap tracks to go or done. One to go. We're going to put one in there if it ever gets here. But uh back to skins. Back to prepping. See you in a minute.

[00:04:14]Everything is prepped. Got pedo mounts, light mounts, skins on the front. We've got skins for the bottoms and the tops.

[00:04:30]And we have not those those are flaps. We already did that. Stringers or uh supports. So those are all done. Next up, we're going to prime. So, I think what we're going to do, it specifically calls out in the instructions to prime both sides of any overlapping skins, which of course makes sense and we'd want to do um anyway, as it tells us to do in section five. So, that means we've got to identify where the skins are going to overlap. I believe, for example, here we're going to overlap. I think this one will be under and there's one. So, we'll do the top side of this skin, but we'll do the bottom side of this skin, I believe. So, I'm going to start through that process of identifying what needs to get primed. Get everything outside, prepped, primed in the paint booth.

[00:05:26]Of course, by paint booth, I mean, saw horses in a piece of plywood. Um, so we'll get that done next so that they're primed and ready to go. And then we've got about a billion nut plates to install. Uh and then we can start cleing up some skins. Here we go.

[00:05:46]Skin prep continues. We've got some primer laid down. Looked all right. So, I'm just going to prime every place where the sheets overlap. Taped it off. Reminded myself why I'm not a painter, but got the primer down. At least this will be the other skin will go over the top. The nose skin. This is a bottom skin here.

[00:06:08]So, a nose skin will go over the top of this and get riveted in there. Thought I'd give you a quick look. So, to continue on with the prep, got about four sheets, five sheets left to prime and we'll start clicking things together. All right, couple quick updates before we get back into the skins. The tail kit is ordered. I have an official creating date of June 10th.

[00:06:33]So, they're going to try to ship two a day starting I think the first shipments go out like the 6th. So, uh that 5 minutes that it took me to place the order um 10 people got in ahead of me apparently something like that. So, anyway, the tail kit, you know, with a de figure delay and then some shipping maybe middle of July, which means I've got uh a lot going on, a busy time at for work and for baseball and other things that I do. Um, but I'm going to try my best to be done with that with both wings by the middle of July. So, figuring that at some point after that, the tail kit will show up and we can jump in and get that done. So, that's the update on the tail kit. It is ordered should be on its way sometime in July. Uh, let's figure Second thing, subscribe if you haven't subscribed. U, I know I said I wouldn't ask again. I'm asking one last time. I just need a few of you uh to go hit that subscribe button. If you would do that, I would really really appreciate it. Help me get over a thousand. That's what I'm trying to get uh get me over a thousand. Lets me do some things with YouTube that I would love to do so I can keep doing this. So, if you like the content and uh all I'm asking, the only support I need is for you to hit that subscribe button.

[00:07:46]If you would do that, that would help me out a bunch. Let's take a look at our skins. We've got everything primed. All the overlapping skins are are primed.

[00:07:56]Everything's prepped. Uh the holes are de deburred where they needed it. Uh the um edges are deburred. We look pretty good there. So let's take a look then.

[00:08:08]We're going to go back to the beginning of our instructions. Had to set up another work area. By the way, the uh flat surfaces in the shop get full real fast. So we pulled parts and we started prep. That was about 3 hours ago in real time. Probably about 3 minutes in this video. the uh so the everything is now prepped and we can actually start putting things together. So it appears as though step number one for everything that we're going to do today is putting nut plates on. So there are the first four, five, six pages here are taking each sheet and installing the nut plates for the inspection covers. So we are going to get started. There's also some instructions about breaking edges. It'll be the first edges we've had to break. Uh looks like on this first piece that we do, there's actually two. We're going to break this edge and this edge. So, I have a couple of different tools for breaking edges.

[00:09:08]We're going to break those out and um see if we can break something in a good way.

[00:09:14]Step one, as always, get my parts bin full.

[00:09:18]426 3-3.5 rivets and the dimpled pre-dimpled nut plates. There's the rivet.

[00:09:32]There's your nut plate.

[00:09:34]We will go here. 24 nut plates. That's just two covers. That's right. You heard it here first. For every one of these holes that you see in these skins that we've been messing around with, they each get 12 nut plates which means they get 24 rivets which means this going to take a while.

[00:09:53]So that is the next step is we are going to set these guys up there cleco and rivet and repeat 48 times just for this skin.

[00:10:17]One down 47 to go. How' we do? Beautiful.

[00:10:27]Last one for that inspection cover. On to number two.

[00:10:32]Going fast. Not so bad. Last rivet installed there. So, this sheet should be ready to go. Inspection covers.

[00:10:41]Everything's on the right way. Turned out good.

[00:10:46]Now, we just repeat for four more sheets. And some of them have five holes in them instead of just two. So, a lot of work to do here. Putting in nut plates for inspection covers.

[00:11:00]Thanks to the two people who wanted to solid rivet this wing cuz it's my understanding about half these holes are for that.

[00:11:07]Fantastic. It's probably not true, but it's a fun story.

[00:11:27]This may look like just an ordinary nut plate. It is not an ordinary nut plate.

[00:11:34]Well, it is, but it is number 120. This is the 120th nut plate I have installed since 9:00 a.m. this morning.

[00:11:42]I got this J O thing that's gotten in the way a couple times, so I hadn't been working on it straight. But, uh, yeah, 120 nut plates, and that's just the left wing skins.

[00:11:54]This is why I'm building one wing at a time, cuz I don't work in a factory for a reason. It would drive me absolutely crazy to do this for another two hours.

[00:12:03]So instead I am going to seat that rivet and then this rivet. 120 nut plates. 240 rivets.

[00:12:19]I can do math. See that? All right. Last one.

[00:12:26]Bang.

[00:12:28]Oh, there we go. All turned out really good. Nut plates are done. under rolling the edges.

[00:12:35]So, every time I do something new on this project, it's this mix of, "Oh, that'll be fun." versus, "Well, that's scary as I'll get out." So, I have to take these wing skins and break it's called one of the edges um on almost every sheet and in some cases multiple edges.

[00:12:54]The instructions call it out very easily. So, I've got a couple of tools.

[00:12:58]I think the one I'm going to start with is this one, which is just a modified vice grip from Cleveland Aircraft tool.

[00:13:08]Um, the edge forming tool, EF60 is the is the number of it. Uh, I think it's a $40 tool, something like that. $50 tool.

[00:13:18]Looks really well done. I want they have a video that explains how it works.

[00:13:22]Looks fairly easy. So, I'm going to jump in like like I said a couple of times in this project, you just jump in and usually it's well, usually it's about how it looks and sometimes it's terrifyingly difficult. We'll find out which one this is. I'll let you know.

[00:13:41]First edge done. You can kind of see it, I think. See how it shows up, but just a very slight little break along that edge so that it will lay flat where the skins come together. I think that's all we're supposed to do. We'll keep going. First piece done.

[00:13:56]Um, yeah. I don't I don't know if it's going to show up or not in the video, but just a very slight little bend essentially in that. Help the skins lay flat. It's It's easy as it looks. This tool works awesome so far. Anyway, getting it set right appears to be super important. and then not letting it slip off. Making sure this edge rides up against that surface.

[00:14:23]Also, I suppose it's important you get it facing the right way. I haven't got it upside down yet, but if you did, you'd you'd uh break them the wrong direction. That would be bad. Anyway, uh one of the pieces done with five or six to go so far. Fan of the Cleveland aircraft tool EF60.

[00:14:44]I have no idea what I'm doing. You guys know that, but it says in the video to use a straight edge. Lay a straight edge up against it and then you can see how much you're breaking it. And boy, that is really true. So, I mean, you just, again, not going to show up on the video, but use the straight edge up here against it to see how much you're getting in there. And you just barely perceptible. Um, is what I'm getting.

[00:15:11]And that's my understanding is what we want. So, we're going to keep moving.

[00:15:18]All the edges are broken on all the skins. Um, I think I probably aired on the side of not enough versus too much.

[00:15:28]Trying to be gentle.

[00:15:30]Uh, a couple little things. Tool works great. You do have to really make sure you get the pressure so that doesn't roll off. it doesn't want to roll off, but other than that, I think it's more control with that than with the disc that you just twist. Um, I was I experimented with that just for a second on a piece of scrap and I felt like I was going to get way too much bend in it. And uh yeah, so anyway, I think we've got the skin's broken. The next steps are to build the light bracket and the pedo bracket. So, I'm going to going to jump into that here next. So, that that's all done and then we're ready to start putting things together. I know.

[00:16:13]Finally ready to start putting things together.

[00:16:17]All right. All right. All right. Let's build a pedo bracket.

[00:16:23]I went ahead and threw a little primer on these parts since I had the old self-etching out anyway.

[00:16:31]Um, so it looks like this thing's got a bend in it. Has broken right at the end. So there's definitely a top and a bottom to this piece. It looks like they call it out several times. So uh, we're going to make sure we machine counter sync on the correct side, which would be the bottom side, which is this side. So, we're going to get the old magic blue pen out.

[00:16:57]Mark this the bottom side. And we will number 30 machine counter sync one, two, three, four holes and then uh cleco the brackets on.

[00:17:08]Use some counter sunk 84-5s and get this bracket made up.

[00:17:15]Piece all clecoed together. Orientation confirmed. We have got our our counter sunk holes, got our counter sunk rivets all ready to go. I think we will uh we'll squeeze these four rivets and this guy will be ready to go. And then we can start installing stiffeners.

[00:17:41]We said this was a long one. It is like 34 pages or something and I'm on page 11. Get these wing skins installed.

[00:17:59]Pedo tube holder bracket complete. Counter sunk rivets.

[00:18:06]Looks good. Nice and flush.

[00:18:11]One more prep job done.

[00:18:15]There's our completed work of art.

[00:18:18]On to the next next page. Start working on the stiffeners that go on this bottom side. And there's some shims that go in there. Apparently, you use some super glue to glue the shims onto the stiffeners to hold them temporarily. And then a rivet eventually goes through there. So, get that stuff out and we'll start there. I'll show you what we get. Took me a couple minutes to study this, get the parts out to figure out what the heck was going on here. There are two shims, two different shims. They are different thicknesses. They go on the end of these stiffeners here. All right.

[00:19:02]And there's a whole bunch of detail in here, which actually helps once you get the parts out and looks at look at it.

[00:19:07]It kind of makes sense. So, they talk about a doubler, and I I kept couldn't figure out what the doubler was. Well, the doubler's way back in here already pre-installed. Those of you who are building your own tanks, you'll know that. I didn't that there's a doubler in there until I'm like, "Oh, that's where the doubler is. It's already there." So, what's going to happen here is we are going to glue. We're going to skip these first four holes where there's already a doubler under here. But those shims, the I'll double check, but I think it's the thinner ones go on holes five and six.

[00:19:42]On the aft part of the wing, and on the forward part of the wing, stiffener, skip the first, same deal. Skip the first four. And then holes five and six, get the slightly uh thinner shim. So anyway, the once you get it out and you look at it, it makes sense. Trying to read the instructions, I I wasn't making heads or tails of it until I got the parts out and like, "Oh, now I see what they mean." Uh, so I'm going to get these little shims glued on into their appropriate spots. We'll get those slid slid in. And I think that part's pretty well complete. Then we will start uh clecoing on the skins. actually start putting skins on. Woohoo.

[00:20:29]Shims are applied to the stiffeners. You know, I think this is a perfect example of how to account for time.

[00:20:38]Something I think about when I'm building this thing over the last 90 days. So, it took me about 5 minutes to figure out the parts and kind of how they went together. Took me about 90 seconds to glue them on. Took me 20 minutes to drive to town to get more superglue when I realized my son used the entire bottle of superglue that we had to glue his Crocs back together yesterday. So, how do you account for that 20 minutes? Did I spend that 20 minutes building an airplane? Cuz I'm now a half hour in to putting these two little tiny shims on each of these stiffeners, but over 20 minutes that was to go find superglue. Anyway, I digress.

[00:21:19]This is done, I believe. And they're going to slide in like this all the way up through here. If you can see that end of that goes here. So those first four holes has have a doubler underneath.

[00:21:35]Then we got shim shim and then you can kind of feel. So, it's just to it the the theory there with the reason for those shims must be to make this more gradual so that we don't get a dip in it when we rivet it, I assume. Um, that seems to be what makes sense to me. So, those are going to slide in there about like that and then they'll get clecoed in and we'll go to the next step.

[00:22:00]Stiffeners in place.

[00:22:05]Shims glued on. Next, we've arrived, boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen. We have made it. We're actually going to quo skins on. So, we are going to take skin 4504-01, which is this right next to the pre-built fuel tank skin. We're going to put it into place and we are going to Cleico it. Says nothing about rivets, just cleco. Actually, I've already looked ahead. We're going to quick both bottom skins on. Um, and then we're going to flip it over without putting any rivets in the bottom side.

[00:22:59]Well, the holes line up. Victory number one means we don't have it totally backwards or upside down or crooked or anything else. So, it's a good start. That's a good start. That is definitely where that skin goes. All the holes definitely line up.

[00:23:26]Small victory number one. We'll start clecoing that bad guy on kind of randomly place the first few cleos into these stiffeners and ribs.

[00:23:48]Let's get everything kind of lined up.

[00:23:54]I bought a couple hundred more cleos.

[00:23:57]We'll see if that gives us enough to do every third hole.

[00:24:01]Maybe something like that, I believe.

[00:24:05]There's varying opinions on how many you need. I saw somebody did just one sheet at a time, riveted them all on, and then went to the next sheet.

[00:24:15]Lots of ways to skin the cat, I guess.

[00:24:20]Is that just something they say here?

[00:24:23]Seems kind of offensive to cats.

[00:24:27]H. Anyway, lined up really nicely. Skin number one is on.

[00:24:48]Skin number two.

[00:24:51]Let's go make sure I have it orientation correct. I do holes line up. I assume this hangs over because that's the wing tip is going to go somewhere down there. Let's go with that.

[00:25:10]Holes line up again.

[00:25:14]We'll start gluing this guy up. Two skins on two wing skins are on. Let's get you in here. Have a look. Uh these I'm going to save some cleos on these stiffeners.

[00:25:38]That's all that's underneath these holes is the stiffeners. So I just clecoed them at the intersections. I mean they're not a lot to line up there. They are lined up definitely. Uh the ribs lined up really well. You know, that's some of the first prep work you do is on those ribs. And I don't know what I'm doing now. I really didn't know what I was doing then. So, kind of rewarding to see, hey, the holes line up and the skin's going on relatively easily. I didn't have to fight anything to get it to cleco together. I didn't have to go to war or battle with anybody. So, I feel good about that. This kit is so precisely manufactured. Super impressed.

[00:26:16]Continue to be super impressed. The lower skins are on.

[00:26:24]Let's look at what's next.

[00:26:27]Both those skins attached clecoat into place. All right, next step. Position secure wing assembly right side up onto padded blocks. So, two issues with that.

[00:26:42]Number one, I don't have my padded blocks built yet. So, I'm going to do that. I'm going to go jump into woodworking class. Not going to film that because you don't want to see it.

[00:26:52]But, I'll build some padded blocks. Uh that I probably should have had them for the flaps. Appreciate the folks helping below. Uh definitely need them for the wing here where it's a little heavier.

[00:27:01]So, I'm going to just take some pieces of that crate and some 2x4. I bought just a little bit of foam to stick on top of 2x4 and I'm going to make four or five, maybe six. this the long wing uh blocks so that we can set this on. I said there's two problems. Second problem, I'm by myself today and uh it looks to me like either you need multiple hands, like maybe three or four folks, or some sort of jig or tool or help uh to hold it while you flip this wing over once you get it skinned. So, I am going to wrap this one up here and build my wood blocks and get some help and then we will be back. I apologize this video is a couple of days late. Try to get out on Tuesdays. This one's going to be Thursday likely. Lot going on this time of year for me. I'm traveling for work. So, I uh will likely publish again late next week, probably over the weekend, maybe even next week. But, I'm going to try to be as consistent as we can. We're going to get this wing flipped, get the top side skins on in the next episode, and get everything riveted together is the plan. And we are getting dangerously close to having a complete left wing. I heard from Vans today, the last backordered flat track, that middle flap track is supposed to go into shipping uh early next week. So, if they get that shipped to me, we will actually be able to finish this wing completely here hopefully on the next episode. If you haven't subscribed, please do so. Do me a favor, click that subscribe button. I'd really appreciate it. I won't ask again. I promise.

[00:28:38]Promise. With that, thanks for joining me. As always, appreciate the support.

[00:28:43]We will see you next time. Goodbye.