Today was a rather slow day.  Talking with Aussie Long-EZ Guru Wayne Blackler (the beautiful silver Long-EZ on the banner above is his creation), he mentioned that he would have most likely put nutplates in behind LB23, vs the plans way, to make installing the hinge bolts a much easier process.  The plans have you gluing three 1/4″ blocks of aluminum and then drilling & tapping them through the fiberglass after everything is glassed and you’re ready to mount your 3 (or 4 if you add a fourth bolt) bolts.  In thinking about it, I prefer not to drill “blind” and would rather deal with a known quantity.  So I decided to take his advice and install a thin metal plate with 3 nutplates riveted to it.  This assembly would then get floxed to LB23 and sit behind it (out of sight) and be imbedded in the foam.  Sounded like a good plan!

The only problem was I didn’t have any thin metal on hand, and I had no rivet capability either (although I had the full compliment of rivets called for in the plans).  So I went on a shopping spree.  I bought 0.5mm Anodized aluminum (for the nutplate) and a pop riveter set at Praktiker (German Lowe’s).  I then bought some simple green, abrasive pads and the highest end primer I could find on the base.

I got home too late to really start any shop work, so I checked out a number of CP newsletters and researched the Internet & blogs.  Part of my research was making sure I understood the (fairly) early CP switch from solid rivets to pop (cherry) rivets.

That is all!