October 31, 2016 update: Horizontal stabilizer skin dimpling/prep, priming, assembly of front spar skeleton

Today - much accomplished including:

- completed dimpling of both HS skins

- deburred HS skin edges 

- prepped interior of HS skins for priming and removed plastic on outer skins where I will be riveting.

- primed HS interior skins.  I'm priming the skins only where metal touches metal on the interior. 

- placed skins in cradles I fabricated over the weekend, using plywood and aluminum angle. 

- riveted the front spar "skeleton" together per section 8-10

- riveted nose ribs in place and clecoed the skeleton in place per section 8-11.  Used LP 4-3 rivets to attach nose ribs to front spar.

October 28-30, 2016: new workbench, visit from Vic Syracuse, parts prep for HS assembly

Sunday October 30th update

Friday October 28 - built a new workbench in preparation for building the HS.  Also cut out plywood pieces to support HS skins per Section 8-6.  Cut, deburred, and drilled pieces of angle to support he plywood cradles.   Cleaned up the shop after this carpentry work.

Vic Syracuse came today to critique my work so far.  He's generally very complimentary of my work but found a few skin rivets on VS that he recommends removing and carefully replacing.  We drilled out the 2 bad rivets on forward spar of VS - I'll replace these with CherryMax slightly oversized.

Saturday, October 29 - long day of parts prep, sections 8-6 and 8-7.   Bent/drilled parts and extensive deburring and prep for priming.   Doesn't sound like much but this work takes time!   Still have quite a bit of prep of the parts for HS skeleton and then will start dimpling the HS skins.

Today - Completed Section 8-7, and 8-9.  Started dimpling HS skin.

October 26-27, 2016: Horizontal Stabilizer spars

Yesterday completed Section 8-3 (last step was riveting center bracket onto front spar of HS.

Yesterday and today, completed Section 8-4 today.  Several hours yesterday and today match-drilling, counter-sinking, deburring, scuffing and cleaning, priming.  Finally riveting all these parts together.  This completes initial assembly of both HS spars.  Next step will be prepping spar web, ribs, and preparing for riveting skeleton to skin.

October 23, 2016 update: Starting on horizontal stabilizer

I've started work on Section 8.  Over past 2-3 days have completed section 8-2, part of 8-3.  Riveted doubler and hinge brackets to horizontal stabilizer rear spar.  Prepped some parts for front spar (spar caps, stringers).   

October 20, 2017: Rudder leading edges rolled & riveted

Yesterday and today I completed section 7.  Rolling the leading edges was quite a chore and I'm not 100% happy but I think the result is fine and will look good on the aircraft.

October 13, 2016: Rivet rudder trailing edge

Completed Sections 7-10, 7-11, and 7-12 Steps 1-2.   After removing the trailing edge clecos from the aluminum angle, it was a bit difficult to separate the trailing edge, due to adherent JB Weld that oozed out of the rivet holes.  I was able to separate using a sharp blade but there is some scratching of surface on one side of trailing edge.  This won't matter ultimately as the skin will be scuffed extensively for painting.  It's more of an annoyance than anything else.  

Quite a lot of riveting of parts, including the final part which is riveting the trailing edge.  I used the standard "double flush rivet" technique as taught at Synergy.  This worked well.  I did about 1/2 of the rivets on one side and noticed a very slight bow in the trailing edge.   Turned it over and did the remaining rivets from the other side which removed most of the bow.  After completion, measuring along the edge using a straight edge (aluminum angle), the total deviation end-to-end is about 1/10 of an inch.  Very pleased with this result!.

October 12, 2016: Bond rudder trailing edge

Completed section 7-09.  Had to drill out one rivet because skin stiffener had ended up on on the wrong side of the shear clip.  I call Vans - wasn't sure if this would be enough of an issue to require drilling out the rivet, but Scott at Van's felt that it was important to get the hole spacing right due to skin stresses.   The rivet was holding the stiffeners together and would not allow opening the skin at shear clip enough to move to the correct side.  Once it was out, easy peasy.  Had to use angle drill attachment (tight fit drill kit) - tools matter.

I used a piece of aluminum angle drilled to the spacing of the trailing edge to hold the trailing edge in place.  I considered pro-seal and/or Van's "tape method" but ended up using JB Weld, which I got from Carl and Rafael's 14A build site.   Looks great for now - will be interested to see how the riveting turns out.

October 11, 2016: Rudder parts prep, riveting ribs/stiffeners

Lots of work today.  I'm on paid time off so I spent the entire day working on Section 7-7 and 7-8.  Much of the time was spent prepping parts - drilling, dimpling, deburring, priming.

I used back rivet technique for all the ribs/stiffeners attached to both rudder skins and pop rivets for the shear clips.  The rivets look great.

I did make one mistake - forgot to include the attach strip at bottom of right hand rudder skin.  Drilled out some rivets and re-did it.  Good as new....

October 8 2016 Update: Continuing work on Rudder

After a work trip to Australia and running away from Hurricane Matthew, back home today and got some good work done.

Completed Section 07-06 which is basically clecoing together the rudder skeleton, and trimming the leading edge material to fit.

Started Section 07-07.  More of the same, have completed fit of one skin to the skeleton.

Nice to be back at it....