Tonight I riveted together the pieces I had clecoed to the rudder spar. This took a little longer than I had planned, as I needed to test my squeezer on a few of the longer length rivets. I also took the chance to review plans and decided I should dimple in a couple of spots that would be hard to reach later.
I was able to squeeze all of the rivets except for one where I needed a double offset piece and my heaviest bucking bar. After a few runs at it, I had a good looking rivet. Somehow I ended up with a little smily face, but I was just happy to set it set correctly. These are seriously long rivets, 9/16 of an inch long, and 10/16th for the nutplate rivets. You can’t tell from the pictures below, but there are 4 layers of aluminum that these rivets are holding together, including the rudder horn which is around 3/16 thick.
The one remaining hole is to secure a cable tie attach point, which I’ll pop rivet on tomorrow.
Here’s the whole piece as it currently stands. This really is a big rudder!
Good stuff Neal, how did the painting go this time?
Sounds like you’ve got the riveting sorted. I guess you don’t fit the stabiliser and rudder together until later
Painting went well for the rudder parts, much easier, faster, with more consistent application than the first time. Yeah, it doesn’t come together until the rudder is finished and fittings are installed (screwed) into the nut-plates on the rudder spar.