I started the process of sealing the fuel tanks on the end ribs yesterday. I am dealing with a learning curve here since I have never done this – but all in all it went fairly well.
I started by clearing the bench and laying out all the tools I needed and the parts I was focusing on. This included nitrile gloves, gram scale, tongue depressers, sheet metal scrap as my mixing pallet, brushes cut down to 3/8 inch, acetone, paper towels, flamemaster two part b-2 (tacky in two hours), paint can opener, rivet gun with 3/32 nose, rivets, cleco pliers and clecos and a coffee can with acetone for soaking the clecos in after they get nasty.
I used a paper towel doused with Acetone to wipe the nose of the rivet gun periodically to keep it clean. Then I circled the rivet shop head and factory head with sealant. It wasn’t but 5 minutes or so before the sealant was all over – not sure how it happened but I was making a mess. See all the sealant finger prints below…
Dan kept telling me – “it doesn’t matter if it is messy, only that it doesn’t leak”. Well – that isn’t my style really – I want it to be great and look pretty good too! So – acetone to the rescue. It takes off any of the stray finger print sealant….exactly what I needed.
This is much better. Only problem is – all of you sheet metal guys know this – I have tiny cuts all over my fingers from the metal and that acetone burns so bad!!!!
So – about two hours later I have 3 ribs done, 55 grams of sealant used and a whole pile of paper towels and gloves to discard.
But I did it! And so can you!
I am sure tomorrow will go much faster.
Go Team Panther!
-Rachel
