Category: About

Ashley Miller of Flight Youth Engineering in Brisbane, Australia posted his use of Rivkits on VansAirforce.net.

The nature of metal fatigue can be discovered when building your RivKit. Metal fatigue can show up as a crack and parts broken apart when you bend the aluminum parts too many times. You can use metal fatigue to your advantage to break apart the individual parts from the RivKit tree. However, you can unwittingly break the parts when you bend them during assembly.

The aluminum alloy used to make the Rivkits is 5052. 5052 alloy accepts bending better than other alloys of aluminum. A single bend or an adjustment to a bend will not typically crack the part. If the part is bent multiple times in the same place, the part will crack.

RivKits provide a simple kit to teach about building aluminum aircraft, similar to the popular Vans Aircraft series.  The two RivKits available are based on the RV-7a and the RV-8 aircraft. The kit is a flat piece of aluminum approximately 5″ x 5″. It takes about 20 minutes to assemble. Painting takes longer. It only took a few minutes to spray paint this yellow plane after assembly.

The motivation to design and provide the first RivKit was initiated by the ASK (Airway Science for Kids) program in Portland, Oregon.  ASK needed a hands-on project to quickly teach kids some basics about how aircraft are constructed, with the intent of motivating them to want to learn more about aviation. The ASK Program for high schoolers is the TeenFlight Program, where Teen build a flyable airplane.

Building a RivKit is easy:

1. Buy a RivKit.
   The kit comes with pre-cut flat aluminum parts and rivets.
2. Follow the Assembly Instructions.
3. Learn about the parts of an airplane.

Airway Science for Kids, Inc. exposes youth, especially those who are socially and economically challenged, to activities that inspire their interest and growth toward higher learning and careers in aerospace, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).

The ASK program recently purchased 500 RivKits to help teach Portland School District students about aircraft construction. I visited the class and enjoyed the enthusiasm the students had towards the hands on experience of building the RivKits.

See more about Airway Science for Kids at airwayscience.org

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Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum use the Rivkits to offer students and adults an opportunity to learn some of the basics of riveting, a skill they may not have tried before. Rivkits are also used as an introduction to riveting for their Wings Aerospace Academy .  The hope is that the introductory riveting workshop will inspire students to get involved in aviation by learning a new skill. During our workshops, we go over some of the basics of flight (four forces, parts of an airplane), as well as a brief history of flight and when riveting began to appear in aviation. We highlight the role of “Rosie the Riveter,” and go over basic tool safety before participants build their airplanes.

Here is a photo of some of the girls at an October 2017 riveting camp.

You can have stickers made with any graphics, including graphics to match your plane. Send images of your plane to Cliff@RivKit.com .

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RivKits were developed as a project for young people to quickly get them a hands-on experience similar to building a full size flying airplane, like the one built by high school teens in the ASK TeenFlight program.