Captain’s Log: Day 2. Great success with the riblet.
So after yesterday’s wasted (I know, it wasn’t really wasted) time making two FAILURES of riblets for the elevator trim cutout, today’s worked out much better.
I had actually woken up at 3am in a cold sweat; “Oh my gosh, I need to tie the front of the riblet into the elevator trim spar.” (Warning: Cold sweat may be exaggerated.)
Anyway, I got out the jigsaw with a fine metal-cutting blade and found that this technique was far superior to the snips, which leave little ridges along the cut.
So, more measuring, tracing, and drilling/cutting.
This is try #3.
Then, after judiciously edge finishing (which is a must before bending aluminum…ask me how I know.)
Okay, Those bends are pretty good, let's work on the front.
Hey pups! (I took about 15 pictures of them for your viewing pleasure, but this is the only one that wasn't too blurry.) Jack and Ginger, curious about the airplane.
Also, I had picked this surface conditioning kit up at Harbor Freight. 1-inch diameter, and blue is finer (I think) than maroon.
This worked pretty well for quick finishing. I want to try the larger sizes, too.
You can see from the paper template on the right that wasn’t going to tie in to the spar. I cut out the corners on the piece to the left pretty roughly.
Old template on the right, current work piece on the left.
So then I edge-finished and bent the three tabs that tie in to the spar. Because there was a dimple already in the bottom flange of the spar, I went ahead and drilled and dimpled that one ear on my new riblet.
How do you like the nice sharp picture of my set of needle files and permagrit block? (And very blurry pic of my riblet being dimpled. The yoke and die just barely fit.)
Here’s the almost finished product.
It's kind of cute.
So it doesn’t fit “perfectly” in the openeing, but this is close enough that I don’t need to remake it. I’ll tweak it a little and reduce some of those gaps you see in the coming days.
Pretty darn good.
The big gap on the left is actually the elevator skin bowing locally that I need to fix. The riblet is actually straight.
I'm so happy this one worked out.
Maybe later this week or this weekend, I’ll get this tweaked and drilled/dimpled. Then, I can move ahead with prepping the elevator for prime and riveting.
An hour of wuhoo!
Andrew's RV-7 Build Log 