Lots of little tasks on the rudder stiffeners and skins were taken care in the last week. Right rudder skin stiffeners were cut and trimmed, then stiffeners for both sides were edge-finished and dimpled. One thing I learned from Gus at Van’s is that the reference holes used to trim stiffeners, don’t need to be removed – so I didn’t do that on the right stiffeners as I did on the left ones.

[17 Jan 05 – Note from the future…Van’s calls for these holes to be removed from the elevator stiffeners. Call them if you’re not sure what to do – maybe that will get them to standardize their plans/instructions.]

Rudder stiffeners prepped with the Touch-n-Prep pen

Before priming the stiffeners, they needed scuffing and alodining. I hate alodining…it’s a messy, nasty, potentially toxic process. So I was really jazzed to find Touch-n-Prep pens. These things are the berries…they’re like magic markers full of alodine 1132. Just coat the parts, and let them dry – no rinsing required. I got mine from Stein Bruch at SteinAir. Stein is great…he’s selling these things cheaper than anyone else, and I got mine a day or so before he said it would arrive. I used the pen to alodine these stiffeners, and the only waste was a couple of pairs of nitrile gloves. No contaminated dip water, no mess all over the floor – freakin’ fabulous!

Rudder skins prepped with the Touch-n-Prep pen

Here are the skins scuffed and alodined. This would have been a lot more messy with the old process of alodining. Next step is to prime the stiffeners and skin rivet lines, then back-rivet the skins and stiffeners.