So, I actually went down this route a few years ago before I bought the Rans S-19.
Since we moved to Phoenix from Los Angeles and were able to rent a house with a garage, I had considered building before. I grabbed the practice kits from Vans, ordered enough tools to build those, and put the tool box together. The tooling was ordered from Cleaveland Aircraft Tools.
I realized when I finished that we might consider moving at some point and relocating tons of parts would be feasible, but definitely not fun. Too much of a risk of losing parts and such. Since I mostly wanted fly at the time, I ended up buying instead and kept all of my tools.
Good thing I kept everything because prices shot up like crazy. The same tungsten bucking bar I bought for $150 a few years ago? It’s $600+ and you can even get one! Mostly due to the wars going on right now.
At the end of it, I needed about $2,000 more in hardware and tooling. Various cutters, dies, a handful of clekos, and more. A big portion of it: buying two more yokes for the pneumatic squeezer and getting the DRDT2 compression dimpling tool.
While I can definitely buck rivets fine, I like the control and quality I can get with the squeezer. Doing a bit of research, I found that a grand majority of the rivets can likely be squeezed with the right yokes installed. So, I have the standard 3” and grabbed the 2.5” flange nose and 4” thin nose no-hole yoke. From what I understand, I should be able to do most things solo with that.
I also picked up the DRDT2. Looks like many more folks swear by it instead of the older c-frame. I believe it too since you can get a lot more control with pulling a lever than hitting something with a dead blow hammer (without lots of practice).
I do still need a few more things later on. Some of those items:
- More clekos!
- I really wish I had just ordered a boatload of these years ago. They’re over double the price today!
- A bench grinder
- I can get the ryobi one for
$75, so that’s not bad. It’ll be nice to get a polishing wheel on that to speed up deburring.
- I can get the ryobi one for
- Paint gun and primer
- Never used a paint gun before, so that’ll be fun to research.
- Likely a 20-30 gallon air compressor.
- I don’t know how much air a paint gun uses, but I have the feeling I’ll want more capacity for a more consistent spray.
- My 6 gallon pancake air compressor likely won’t cut it once I start priming.