Rudder Prep

Posted on by Neal

I had my initial tech counselor meeting tonight, which was very helpful. Everything looks good, except my 1/8 rivets are slightly under-done. While they are all 1.5x the diameter by the calipers, the rivet gauge shows them slightly under “ideal”. I will fix it easily by squeezing them all slightly more. I ordered an adjustable squeezer piston from Plane Tools, which will allow me to fine tune the squeeze, rather then having to use the washers as spacers which is slightly less accurate.

I then spent some time deburring rudder skins, and final drilling the rudder counterweight support ribs at the top of the spar. Despite the plans indicating otherwise, I found that the top two holes where the spar attaches to the top rib were already final size.

Rudder prep

Posted on by Neal

I spent time today deburring rudder parts, fluting ribs, radiusing leading edges of ribs, reading plans, and some other tasks such as drilling out a couple of holes in the rudder skins. I realized I needed a few more tools, including a pop rivet dimple die with 120 degree head (vs 100 degree for solid rivets). I ordered the new parts from Cleveland Aircraft tools, as they have been super helpful in the past (as have all other companies I’ve worked with so far), and also picked up some 3M tape for the trailing edge.

Forward spar riveted

Posted on by Neal

My dad helped me again today and we spent several hours in the garage working this afternoon. We started by riveting together the ribs and forward spar for the Vertical Stabilizer. The 8 rivets ended up taking longer than I expected, as we tried to ensure the rib flanges were tight against the spar. With the use of some small clamps we were able to hand squeeze the bottom rib rivets, which came out great. The rest of the rivets were good except for the last one on the top rib, where a gap formed between the rib and the spar flange. Not really sure how it happened, but there’s not much clearance in there and it lifted just a fraction. I’ll check with my tech counselor tomorrow, my guess is it’s ok. Shouldn’t be hard to drill it out if needed and redo. It was a huge help having my dad to help hold parts and double check alignment, etc.

I’m going to leave the Vertical Stabilizer here and wait for my tech councilor visit before proceeding. So we moved onto the Rudder, and started by separating and deburring the various skin stiffeners and flanges. We wrapped up after final drilling #30 holes in the rudder spar for the shims and doublers.