Another exciting night in the shop. T-Rex (that’s what I’m calling him for now) helped me, too.
Since the rudder skeleton is now fully ready, We dug out the new skins and got them devinyled. Last time around, I would have used a soldering iron to draw lines down the rivet holes and peel off just the blue vinyl we needed to. This time, we just pulled it all off. I guess I’m at a different point in my life now.
Virgin skin, v2.0.
Fast forward about an hour, and we had both sides of both skins devinyled.
Now, what do you do with a toddler while you are trying to enlarge the prepunched holes to #40? YOU GIVE HIM A PERMANENT MARKER and tell him he can draw on any blue or silver airplane part.
I hope there are no blue or silver pieces of furniture in the house…
So, after a few passes with the drill, the Left Rudder skin is now ready for deburring and dimpling.
So shiny and smooth!
I forgot how slow this goes. 1.5 hours on the rudder. (Oh, I upped the “reordered parts count” up to 9 (from 6). Even though I didn’t order them, they were purchased for the kit (by the gentleman who bought, then sold my kit back to me).
Oh, and today marks the passing of 400 build hours. Only took me 9 years to get here.
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Andrew's RV-7 Build Log 