Stiffeners drilled to left elevators.
With the stiffeners fabricated, it was time to match drill them to the skins. Got the left side done today. The Rockwell angle drill I found on eBay came in handy when drilling those stiffener holes close to the skin bend.
Elevator stiffeners
Over the last three days I completed a majority of the elevator stiffeners. Unlike the rudder, elevator stiffeners aren’t all pre-marked to their finished length; some must be fabricated from longer lengths of stiffener angle. Also during this process, I found another discrepancy in Vans’ plans. Rudder plans don’t call for removal of all reference holes from each stiffener, but the elevator plans do. Which one is correct? I asked Van’s this question during rudder construction and got the following response… “You don’t need to remove all of the holes, but if you have it won’t significantly affect the strength of the stiffeners.” So why require it on the elevators?
Got bent!
And the leading edge is finished. Closing the middle and lower sections was a four-handed operation; I squeezed the leading edges together while Ellen inserted clecos. The process was repeated after final-drilling the holes to #30 and deburring them.
Done!
And with the leading edge finished, the rudder is finished. After all the hassle with rivet guns and the tedium of setting trailing edge rivets, I’m pretty happy with the results.
Done!
Gotta have at least one picture of me and a finished product. Look close and you’ll see Ellen in a reflection from the rudder skin.
Get bent!
The next adventure in learning was how to roll and close the rudder leading edge. I bought both 7/8″ and 1″ dowels from Home Depot, not knowing which one would work better. As it turns out, the 1″ dowel is a better choice; following Van’s directions with a smaller diameter dowel leads to a rolled edge that has a lot of curvature toward the front edge, but not enough at the rear edge (next to the spar) to make closing a little easier. I tried moving the dowel a little closer to the spar, but it was tough to get it to stay there. Generally after a couple of bends on each side, the edge was ready for closure.
Double-flush rivets
I used Van’s recommended procedure for setting the trailing-edge rivets, with a few exceptions. First, I used the pneumatic squeezer to initially set rivets in the sequence recommended by the manual. Then I used the back-rivet set to get the shop heads parallel with the trailing edge. And finally, I used a swivel flush set on the manufactured side make each shop head as flush as possible with the skin. The last two steps were done to groups of four or five rivets at a time – hit one side with the back-rivet set, then flip the rudder and finish up with the flush set.
Trailing edge, left side
And the result? The trailing edge was straight to within 0.04 inches, which beats Van’s requirement of 0.1″. If you sight down the edge you’ll see some very minor pillowing or waves in the edge, but overall I’m satisfied. And there was much rejoicing. Yea.
Trailing edge finished!
Go Jackets!
I couldn’t stand it any more…it was time to get that trailing edge started. I had a 6 oz. cartridge of Proseal sitting around, mixed it up and popped it into the Semco pneumatic dispenser. The Semco gun didn’t work as well as expected, but it worked enough to get the wedge Proseal’d.
A curing wedge
Here’s the trailing edge setting up. The basement is somewhat cold – 55-60 degrees – and I left the trailing edge in this pseudo-jig for five days. We were gone for most of that time.
Bring on the proseal!
Almost ready to proseal the trailing edge together – here’s the rudder with upper and lower ribs mostly riveted, plus that spiffy wedge with all those beautiful countersunk holes.
The new yoke from Avery arrived yesterday afternoon, and was put to use today riveting the left rudder skin to the spar. Much better results this time! I neglected to take any new pictures, so just look at the pictures above of the rudder clecoed together, and imagine that the clecos aren’t there.
Not much visual progress in the last few days. I’ve been troubleshooting problems with my 4″ thin-nose yoke, which either because of the yoke or my lack of technique caused a bunch of slanted rivets when attaching the right rudder skin to the spar. A bunch of ’em needed to be drilled out – ugh. I also found out the hard way how much damage a rivet gun can do to 0.016″ skins – don’t ask. Definitely a low point in the project so far. Solutions? I ordered a 3″ regular yoke from Avery to get some of those harder-to-reach rivets that don’t require the 4″ no-hole yoke. In general, a shorter yoke is better – less deflection. Also talked with Cleaveland Tools and the gentleman who rebuilt my squeezer, both in an attempt to figure out what’s going on.
Whits’ autograph
We asked Whits to sign one of the rudder skins before starting the close-out process.
Rudder counterweight assembled
Next step – riveting the counterbalance skin and main rudder skins together. Here’s everything fitted together prior to riveting the top rib in place.