Since the last update I primed the mating areas on the inside of each rudder skin, then primed the stiffeners. Didn’t have time to mix up some two-part epoxy, so I shot the stiffeners with some Tempo zinc chromate I had lying around the shop. Then it was time to set everything up for back-riveting.

Rudder skin with rivets taped in place

Don’t all those little rivets look cool? It’s much easier to do all the rivet insertion at once and tape ’em into place with removable scotch tape.

Back-riveting a rudder skin

And here we go with the back-riveting. The primer application is my attempt to (a) limit the amount of hideously expensive primer that I’m using, and (b) not add as much weight to the tail. Some notes on back-riveting – there are a couple of different back rivet sets available. Some spring-loaded sets have a large Delrin sleeve that’s really too big to fit in tight places (like between these rivets and the adjacent stiffener angles). I have another one from my old RV-6 days that has a narrow metal collar. I put some hockey tape on the end to protect the surface – works great! [21 Dec 04 – Note from the future…a couple of extra hits on the rivets next to the trailing edge will flatten out the shop heads just a little and reduce the chances that they will cause problems when closing up the trailing edge. Right before I prosealed the TE, I had to squeeze these rivets a bit more because they were keeping the edge from seating properly].

One other communique from the primer wars – the Tempo zinc chromate doesn’t seem to be very durable. Even when applied over alodine, and when using tape on the back rivet set, some of the primer still wore off during riveting.

Back-riveting complete on the left skin

Here’s one rudder skin done…

Back-riveting complete on the right skin

…and the view from the other side. Another bit of info I’ve learned while trimming the blue plastic off these skins is that Van’s is spot-on when they say that the plastic gets harder to remove if it stays on for a long period of time. If I weren’t so obsessive about this stuff, I guess it wouldn’t matter that the plastic looks like crap.