Bearhawk airplanes are primarily held together by welding, riveting, and screwing. For kit builders all the welding is done at the factory and only the latter two are of concern. This still leaves a plethora of different fasteners to deal with.
These fasteners adhere to various aviation standards and are generally spec’ed in imperial measurements. But the lack of familiarization does not end there for the average metric builder. See, millimeters translate to inches quite easily, fraction-inches not so much. New standards, new units, no decimals.
Luckily, there are only so many relevant fasteners and playing with them for a couple of days make them second nature.
Nuts and Bolts
Bolts are used everywhere. A washer is typically added to relive stress and to fine-adjust required bolt length. Most bolts are secured with lock nuts, crown nuts, or safety wire. For safety wire to be employed the bold needs to be shank- or head-drilled. A crown nut is secured by an appropriately-sized cotter pin.
Rivets
Solid aluminum rivets are used to close the wing skins (both -3 and -4), install inspection covers, tank covers, and nutplates. The cowl, and boot cowl skins also rely on riveting. Some builders use nutplates to install the cargo, passenger, and pilot floors but Tinnerman clips can also be used. The aileron pocket skins are installed with pop rivets.
Screws and Nutplates
Screws are used primarily with nutplates. All inspection covers and the two tank covers use these fasteners. Anything removable in or blind-mounted may also use screws and nutplates. Typically parts of the cowl and boot cowl are made removable for inspection purposes. The dimpled washers are used on the thin fiberglass wing tips.