Final Prep for Right Elevator

May 20, 2010

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Well, after deciding not to work out tonight (in favor of wine), I made it out to the garage pretty late for some final prep work before riveting the right elevator.

Tonight's build partner, 2004 Manyana (play on words) Crianza. A delicious tempranillo from Spain.

On with the building, you say? Fine.

One of the last real fabrication items I have left on the right elevator was enlarging the counterbalance skin dimples. To make a long story short, I don’t have #10 dimple dies, so I dimpled with #8, and then planned on using the AN507 screw head and a nut tightened down to enlarge the dimple enough for the screw to sit flush.

This did not work.

Okay, instead of waiting for a week for a $40 dimple die to arrive, let’s be creative.

Plan: matchdrill two holes in a block of wood, countersink the holes, then use a flush set to enlarge the dimples.

Here's my block of wood, later to be countersunk.

Well, I don’t really have any good pictures of my attempt, because that didn’t work either, and I was getting frustrated.

Finally, I told the girlfriend to come out and listen to me explain the problem. (I knew this would help me come up with a solution.)

Without even flinching. “Why don’t you use a bigger screw to make your dimple?”

my face = <deer in the headlights>

Of course! (Except I didn’t have a bigger countersunk crew, but it set me down the right path.)

This should work. (It's my punch set that came with my rivet gun.)

Setup recreated (I had a piece of tape on the skin to prevent marring.)

The hole on the left has been "enlarged." This worked great!

Okay, let’s move on. Next up, I needed to locally bevel the edges where the spar and tip rib are underneath the counterbalance rib (so the top skin doesn’t show the transition bulges. So I marked those, and also started thinking about how to attach these empennage tips. See the two undimpled holes to the right? Those are two (well, 4, two on top and two on bottom) tip attach points that will eventually be drilled, deburred, and dimpled. Might as well do it now so I don’t have to worry about deburring between riveted sheets.

Lining things up to wrap my head around this interface.

I flipped the pieces over and drilled them to #30.

The top two holes have been drilled and deburred, ready for dimpling.

After dimpling…this #6 screw fits pretty well. (Editorial note: I’m pretty locked in to attaching the elevator tips with screws. I know there is really no reason to take the tips off, but right now, I don’t want to commit to blind rivets.)

That #6 screw looks like it will fit pretty well.

Once the other side was done, I primed the interior (and taped off exterior) side of the counterbalance skin.

Priming. You can see the two #6 dimples at the top of the left side of the skin. (I'll do the rest later...the rest are all accessible in the future.)

While that dries…let’s devinyl!

Hooray for devinyling!

All done. (After using compressed air to blow the flaked primer off.)

Back to emp tip attachment, here are the #6 holes in the skin, dimpled the same way as the counterbalance skin.

Nice big dimples. (Whoa, I forgot to deburr that relief hole on the left there. Fixed after picture taken.)

Let’s get this thing clecoed together.

Those big dimples sit nicely in each other. Here you can see those two holes are the only holes that overlap.

Next, the manual has you rivet the following two holes (not accessible once the spar and tip ribs are in place).

Protected with tape, this rivets were set beautifully.

Without clecos, it's starting to look like an elevator.

Next, “loosely place” the counterbalance in the counterbalance skin and “partially” insert the screws.

The untrimmed (on purpose) counterweight in the counterbalance skin.

last, but not least, they have you insert the skeleton in the skin and cleco together.

Wuhoo! It really does look like an elevator!

Those screw heads are pretty flush. (They are not tight yet, so they'll sit a little better once I get them tightened down.)

A couple pictures of some of the interfaces.

Just behind the counterweight.

Trailing edge of the tip.

Inside corner of the counterbalance rib. (What's that stuff hanging from the top edge? I'll have to investigate later.)

Finally, the trailing edge of the inboard rib.

Ready to rivet!

One more shot.

1.5 hours, 4 flush rivets set.

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Posted by Andrew

Riveted Right Elevator Skeleton

May 13, 2010

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Well, I’d been waiting for a couple days for an order from Aircraft Spruce to come in. I ordered a whole bunch (~60) #6 screws and nutplates to use to attach the emp tips, and added a couple 1/4″ nutplates to attach to the elevator counterbalance spars so I can add more weight later for fine elevator balancing.

Here’s the deal. When you initially balance the control surfaces (without paint), you can either leave them a little heavy (which some do), or balance them exactly. Given that I might leave my empennage polished, I thought I would go ahead and balance them perfectly for first flight, then rebalance (pronounced “add weight”) after paint. While the forward tooling hole in the counterbalance ribs would work for a straight up bolt and nut, I’d prefer a nutplate. Also, since the two counterbalance ribs are butted against eachother, I’d prefer to drill for the nutplate now, so I can deburr both sides of both surfaces.

(I wonder how people deburr holes drilled through two permanently attached skins. Maybe just the inside and outside of the two skins and not the middle two surfaces?)

Anyway, here’s the order.

screws and nutplates.

Both size #6 screws in their new home.

I'll definitely be able to tell the difference between the two sizes.

Here are the 1/4″ nutplates. I bought one-lug because I thought the second lug might interfere with the An509 screw and nut used to attach the elevator counterweight. I’ll point it out again later.

MK2000-4 nuplates.

Then, some of the smaller MK2000-06 nutplates. I bought these for some of the tight locations on the emp tips.

I forgot to take a picture of the 60-odd 2 leg nutplates.

Okay, now on to real work. Here I am trying to figure out how to get this thing in a place where I can drill it. I don’t have any 1/4″ clecos, so I had to just eyeball it. That was a bad idea.

After one of the #40 holes drilled.

Here's the second hole drilled. You can see I had to enlarge the tooling hole to much bigger than 1/4" because I am lame and didn't have a 1/4" cleco to located the two attach holes. Lame me.

After taking those apart and deburring the holes, I scuffed everything up, leaving only the four rear-most holes on the E-703 End Rib. Again, I use the rivet in the hole into the countersunk steel bar trick.

Ready to flush rivet to form this dimple.

I have a 5/8" flush set, which comes in handy in some places.

Both done.

After cleaning those two ribs, I set them aside to dry before priming. Then, I moved on to the WD-605-R-1 Elevator Horn.

Let's see. AN470AD4-4 rivets. I might have some of those.

A small smiley on the lower left rivet, but according to the diagrams, it is okay.

6 nice rivets. The shop heads are very nice.

See? Told you.

Then I shot the six on the other side of the horn.

I love this new tungsten bucking bar.

6 more down.

Back to the paint booth.

E-703 End Rib and E-704 Counterbalance Rib being primed.

And now, a big pictures shot of the elevator horn on the skeleton.

It's starting to look like an airplane.

Then, I deviated from the plans (like many builders here.) It is easier to attach the E-704 Counterbalance rib to the spar if you don’t rivet it to the E-703 End rib first. I managed to massacre the left head, and the flange on E-704 didn’t sit flat against the skin on the other side.

Whoa. Take it easy, Andrew.

I don't like how the flange isn't flush with the spar web here.

Time to get the drill out.

Drilled first with #40, then #30 through the head only.

Pop the heads off.

Then re-set. This is a little better.

But not perfect. I think it's going to be good enough. I'd rather see them sitting perfectly flat, but the area around the rivet is sitting where it should be. It's just around the edges of the flange that are standing off a little.

Here are the new manufactured heads. Much better.

There we go. What's next?

Okay, now I need to attach the E-704 to E-703. Wait a minute! There is no rivet callout for these.

I see one for E-703 to E-702 and for E-704 to E-702. Where is the E-704 to E-703 callout? Well, I guess I'll just use AN470AD4-4 rivets.

Yikes.

The three upper middle rivets are all horrible. I can't figure out why the gun is jumping around so much.

Anyway, before drilling those out, I wanted to get that nutplate riveted on. Same deal here, though. I couldn’t figure out how to cleco it on for riveting.

Here are the two NAS1097 rivets ready to go.

I ended up shooting both of these at once. (How cool is that?)

NAS1097-4 (I think they are -4s)

I held the bucking bar on the other side and used my finger to hold the nutplate firmly against the web of the rib.

Is this a good method? No. Did it work? Yes.

Anyway, in the above picture, you can see one of the three rivets that I botched. After drilling all three out, I reset 2 successfully, but messed up this one again.

Grrr. It didn't really bend over, but it kind of shifted to one side.

Drilled it out, then did the exact same thing. This is the third time I’ve drilled out a rivet on this hole.

Grrr.

I figured out that during the first try, I had bent the rib web a little, so the rivet was pre-inclined to lean. I took my tungsten bucking bar and my 5/8″ flush set (without a rivet) and got everything flattened out again. Next try, the rivet set well.

Top middle rivet. Much better.

Finally, an upside down picture of the right elevator skeleton.

Tomorrow, I'll get back to work on the skin. Maybe this weekend I'll have an elevator!

2 hours, 26 rivets. 5 drilled out (3 of those was one hole!)

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Posted by Andrew

Bent Right Elevator Trailing Edge

April 28, 2010

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What a great night in the shop tonight. And, the airplane actually forced me to get something done on the house!

After work today, I needed to stop by the Aviation Depot to buy some hinges, wood, and an 1/8″ dowel rod for elevator trailing edge bending.

Since we’ve been wanting to upgrade the hardware in our house for awhile, I decided to buy the nice hinges, and used the replaced hinges for my bending brake.  Here’s a shot of our powder room door, mid-installation.

Top hinge is the new “oil-rubbed bronze” hinge. Bottom hinge is the old (builder standard) hinge. Looks a lot better.

Up close. I like the new one a lot better. (Later, I went around and made sure all of the crosses in the screw heads were straight up and down. It’s an anal retentive thing I do, especially with light switch plates.)

Anyway, after a ton of VAF research, Orndorff video watching, and builder website reading, I settled on the “other” method, which puts the hinges on the long face, and really only bends with the short side of the 2×4 (or 2×8 cut in half). You really only want that much bending the skin anyway, because the bend needs to occur locally at the radius, not away from the trailing edge. If the wood is imparting force in the middle of the skin, you will end up with the dreaded “bulge.”

Here’s my bending brake being assembled. I had six hinges, so why use them. I grabbed these 2×4, which were nice and straight, and just long enough for the trailing edge. I’ll need to replace these for the flaps and ailerons. I read somewhere they need to be more like 5 feet long for those.

Here it is after assembly. On the left, you can see my skin, that needs to be bent. In the middle, the three dowel rods I purchased. While I was standing in the store, 1/8″ seemed too small, so I bought a few different sizes at $0.50 each. Of course, everyone was right on, 1/8″ is perfect.

I’m going to put the trailing edge of the skin in the little opening at the bottom of the brake (as it is oriented in the picture).

First thing,  I screwed my bending brake to my 2nd workbench with one of the bending surfaces flush with the bench top.

Bending brake, installed.

Then, I put the 1/8″ dowel into the trailing edge of the skin and taped it in place. (Not shown in the following picture, because I was recreating the process for the camera. Look 2 pictures down for the dowel rod.) Then, you put the skin in the brake all the way against the hinges, and start bending.

This is not a fast process. It takes a surprising amount of force. I thought it was going to be a one shot deal, but it takes a lot of bending. You start with the skin against the hinges, then bend around the dowel. That took a whole bunch of times (I was stopping a lot to inspect). Then, you move the skin a little away from the hinge, and bend again. This allows you to really form the edge around the dowel.

If you pretend there is a dowel rod in there, this would be the first bend.

Here’s where I could get to with the dowel rod in place.

About halfway there.

Then, you remove the dowel rod and keep going, same deal, but a lot more gently, because I didn’t want to squeeze the trailing edge too much (now there is no dowel rod to prevent squash-age.

I thought this was good enough, but this is about 3/4 the way there.

Of course, because I thought that was good enough, I clecoed the skeleton into the skin.

It’s starting to look like something that could be considered an elevator.

But, after grabbing my straightedge, I’m getting some “fall-off” before the radius. This happens because the radius hasn’t been formed well, and then you pull the skin down to the skeleton, and it bends close to the trailing edge. It’s not terrible, but I know I can do better.

It’s not the dreaded bulge, but it is some pretty good “fall-off.”

Another shot.

No good here either.

Near the inboard edge.

Hmm. I unclecoed, and grabbed this shot. I’m about an inch from where I need to be, and the tension I am putting on the skin to pull it to the skeleton is causing that slight bend near the trailing edge.

About an inch.

I put that bad boy back in the brake and kept going. This time, I used two BFPs (the “p” stands for pliers. I’ll let you figure out the “b” and “f”) on either side of the brake and finished it up nicely.

More bending.

There we go. I made up that last inch, and now it rests right where the skeleton would go.

Much better. Perfect, in fact.

Here’s an end-on shot.

How great is this? A perfect bend.

Let’s get out the straightedge.

No fall-off before the radius.

Another place on the elevator.

And again, no fall-off. So happy!

After all that, I pulled the vinyl off of the outside of the elevator skins in preparation for deburring.

Hey! There’s shiny aluminum under there. Let’s start putting this bad boy together.

Total, it was two hours tonight, including bending brake construction. It was a great 2 hours though. I am extremely happy with the results. I have a perfectly bent trailing edge.

Boo-yeah.

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Posted by Andrew

Right Elevator Stiffener Riveting

April 18, 2010

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A few days ago I got a little time in on the project. I’ll see if I can remember what happened. 3 hours, 116 rivets…2 of them drilled out and reset. Here we go. First thing, in preparation for stiffener riveting was to get the skin devinyled. Here’s my devinyling table, wooden stick (won’t dissapate heat) and permanent marker.

Ready to use the soldering iron to devinyl.

After devinyling the inside of the right elevator skin.

For some reason I like devinyling. Don't ask me why.

Here’s the outside of the skin after devinyling. This actually takes a long time to do.

I just devinyled the stiffener holes. I'll devinyl the rest after drilling to the skeleton.

At some point last weekend (can’t remember which day), I was sent to Home Depot (maybe Lowe’s…it was a busy day) to grab some gardening supplies. I took the opportunity to grab some indoor/outdoor carpet for the workbenches.

Here's what I call my toolbench with a new carpet surface.

You should be able to see the “workbench”‘ with carpet on it in future pictures. Anyway, I grabbed the skin and did some deburring (interior and exterior) and some scuffing (interior only, for priming).

Scuffed strip on the left, non-scuffed on the right.

After a few more minutes, I dimpled the skin (no pictures, sorry), and then decided they were ready for priming.

Where is that self-etching primer?

i got the picture order backwards, so you’ll see the skin primed later, but here I am getting ready (or just finishing) stiffener edge prep. I usually use my Permagit block to knock down any ridges, edge deburring tool (pictured below)  to chamfer both edges, and then a scotchbrite pad to smooth everything out.

Right elevator stiffeners and my edge deburring tool.

Here’s the picture of my primed skin.

It looks sloppy now, but wait until I get the vinyl off. Then the primed lines will look nice.

After the stiffener edge prep, the stiffeners got taken inside to be washed with dawn detergent.

Here are half of the stiffeners, being cleansed of their oily fingerprints and aluminum dust.

I decided to take a picture of how much detergent I use. Nothing really important, just camera-happy, I guess.

Dirty stiffeners need to be cleansed of their aluminum dust and fingerprints.

After cleaning, they go back outside for priming.

Boo-yeah, primed stiffeners.

While those were drying (and then flipped and sprayed on the other side), I placed rivets in the dimpled holes and taped them in place.

Rivets just asking to be beaten into submission.

I started to backrivet, and everything was going very smoothly.

Beautiful shop heads.

More beautiful shop heads.

God, I love backriveting.

But anyway, I got through all 116 rivets, then flipped everything over and saw these!

Ahh! Worst rivet ever!

This one is not so bad...

I figured out why this happened, and it falls squarely on me.

While I was dimpling, I didn’t pull the other half of the skin back well enough, so the skin side that was being dimpled was not sitting parallel to the faces of the dimple dies. One side of the die dented each of the last stiffener rivet holes on one side. The rivet in the second to last picture was flush against the backriveting plate, but the skin was dented, or above the backriveting plate.

I’m going to drill out all of the bad rivets on the trailing edge (of course, the worse of the bunch is on the top of the elevator, right where all of you are going to come look at my elevators), and then  try to smooth out the skin by backriveting it with a flush set from the inside out.

It might ruin the skins, which will be expensive. I’ll be sure to take some pictures of the process. Maybe it will save one of you some time and frustration…

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Posted by Andrew

Right Elevator Skeleton and Stiffeners

April 9, 2010

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Sorry for the tardiness on the commentary. Here it is.

I decided after riveting the trim reinforcement plate that I will stick with the right elevator for now. Of course, here is the obligatory plans picture.

On to the right elevator.

Instead of following the directions to start in on the stiffeners, I sorted through my lower workbench shelves and pulled out the parts for the right elevator skeleton. I just laid them on the (very dirty) workbench and grabbed this picture.

Right elevator skeleton, ready to rivet. Just kidding.

First up, prepare the two end ribs (edge finish, then flute).

Here they are (E-703 and E-704), sitting nice and flat with each other.

I can’t remember why I took this picture. Maybe after I removed the blue vinyl?

right elevator spar.

Then, it’s time to match-drill the two end ribs together.

The two end ribs clecoed together for match-drilling.

After that, they want you to cleco the two end ribs onto the rear spar. You can see some misalignment here.

See the spar flange hole and how it doesn't line up with the counterbalance rib?

Here's the other side, still not aligned very well.

After some manipulation via fluting and flange straightening, I managed to get everything lined up and match-drilled.

Here's my 12" bit, doing what it does best.

Here’s the outboard assembly after match-drilling.

Ready for disassembly.

Next, they want you to cleco in the counterbalance skin with the counterweight.

There's the right elevator counterweight.

I read on some other builders’ sites that it was difficult to cleco the counterbalance skin on the rib assembly. I didn’t have too much trouble, but it was definitely easier to work front to back.

Counterweight clecoed in.

Next (before going back to the counterweight for drilling), I clecoed on the inboard rib. These are matchrileld to #40, then dimpled and set with flush rivets on the front web of the spar. The reason? The elevator horn must sit flush on this surface. You’ll see later.

E-709 Root rib clecoed on.

Now back to the counterweight. Van’s wants you to matchdrill these to #12. I started with a #40 and worked my way up, blatantly ignoring the advice to use drill lubrication. Of course, I broke 3 bits before I subdued my own stubbornness and moved on to something else.

Broken bit, I need to get some Boelube.

I managed to get some locking needle-nose pliers around the bit and back it out slowly.

Anyway. I moved on to the skeleton.

Here's the skeleton clecoed together and match-drilled. You can see where the elevator horn will sit flush on the spar web necessitating the flush rivets between the spar and the root rib.

Then, I spent a little time inside on the stiffeners. I just rough cut them with snips to the general size.

These are for both elevators, some of these will be cut down further for the smaller required stiffeners between the trim spar and main spar on the left elevator.

2.0 hours today.

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Posted by Andrew

More Trailing Edge Work

March 28, 2010

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After last night’s bad fitting trailing edge, I decided to mark where the dimples weren’t sitting properly, and enlarge the countersink ever so slightly.

The problem is that if you make the countersink large enough to accept the dimple perfectly, you create a knife-edge on the wedge. I guess that is why they have you use the aluminum as a drill guide for the countersink bit. After deburring the few knife edges that I got, it ended up working pretty well, but some of the holes are enlarged a little. With the pro-seal and the double-flush rivets, I am not too worried, but it still bugged me a little. It appears other builders have run into this issue as well.

Another shot of the not so good trailing edge before enlarging the countersinks.

Before I thought I would be able to tackle the rest of the trailing edge today, I got some of the “not-reachable-with-the-squeezer” rivets. here’s a shot of some shop heads for the counterbalance skin to skin rivets.

Decent shop heads.

I also finished up the rivets for the counterbalance rib.

More shop heads.

Then, I installed and removed the counterbalance enough to be able to file away some weight so the lead cleared the shop heads of the interfering rivets.

Nice tight fit today.

Here's the counterbalance. The best file for this left big cutouts, so don't judge me for these.

I also finished dimpling the tip rib and got it edge-finished, cleaned, and primed.

Waiting for primer to dry is like watching a pot of water boil. I can't complain though. It's dry to the touch in about 15 minutes.

Even though that was plenty of work for the day, I decided to tackle the trailing edge. I had everything I needed (Lowe’s didn’t have any RTV, but then I remembered I had some at home from my motorcycle habit, so I was in luck).

Here's me attempting to design a way to keep the trailing edges apart. This sucked, and I ended up using scrap 2x4 in between the stiffeners.

Here’s my tools. RTV, MEK, gloves (I used about 8 pairs) and the tank sealant.

Tools.

Don the gloves, and get ready to mix. I had to read the directions about 15 times before I understood. The hardener (I think) is in the tube part of the plunger. You stick the black piece (behind the big tube) into the hole in the plunger, and as you push the plunger from the bottom to the top, you push the black part so the hardener in the plunger is expelled into the larger tube. Confused yet?

Ready to mix. (I've already cleaned all of the parts.

After pushing the black piece (back on the table now) up to start the mixing process, you twist the plunger head while moving up and down, which starts to mix.

This is after about 75 strokes, which is what the directions say you have to do. I had to keep going. (I may have been doing something wrong, I don't know.) I kept going after this to get a more uniform "black death" color.

Then you unscrew the plunger shaft and screw in the nozzle. Okay, where is my caulking gun? I don’t have a caulking gun. OH MY GOD I FORGOT A CAULKING GUN.

Here it is fully mixed.

That’s okay, I just stuck the handle of a large screwdriver down the tube and it worked great.

Here's one side, ready to be spread out. I put a dab between each hole, and then used a scrap piece of aluminum to spread it out nice and evenly.

Another shot. This seemed to be an appropriate amount of sealer.

After that step, things started getting messy, and I had to change gloves a lot (it gets everywhere), so I stopped taking pictures. After I got both sides covered, I laid it into the scuffed and cleaned trailing edge area of the skin.

Look how good that looks. (Also, you can see my 2x4 spacers.)

Another shot.

Of course, I did a marvelous job putting a perfectly penny sized glob of RTV on the last (aft rivet) of the stiffeners before I removed the wood spacers and closed up. (The wood spacer near the bottom of the rudder was a pain in my ass. I lifted up the trailing edge a little with the top skin, so it stopped squeezing the block, and of course the block slid down toward the front of the rudder. Of course now I can’t let go, but I’m too far away from the other workbench to reach all of my long-reach tools. Ever see one of those situations where a guy has one foot in a boat and one foot on the dock, and he’s stretching and stretching? That was me. Except I finally reached a BFS (big freaking screwdriver) and managed to get the block out without contaminating any tank sealant or RTV.

Here's a blurry shot of the bottom RTV glob. Glob is a technical term.

Then, I got the rudder clecoed to the angle, wiped off any excess sealant, and moved the hole thing to the top shelf of my workbench.

Storage, kind of. I'm going to leave this for a whole week while I start on the elevators.

I think it was 11 rivets.  2 hours before the trailing edge, one hour for the trailing edge. The next post is still from today, but I am tracking it in another section and in another column for total time, so it’s getting its own post.

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Posted by Andrew

Got some more skin…riveted

March 25, 2010

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Before dinner, I managed to finish off the last few things on the right rudder skin and get it clecoed and riveted to the rudder skeleton. I still have to install the counterbalance, finish and prime the tip rib, and get those installed before moving on to the trailing edge, and then leading edge rolling.

I’m holding off on the counterbalance because of the fasteners. The plans call out a AN509 screw and a AN365-1032 self-locking nut to hold the counterbalance in.

I know the FAA (AC 43-13) has deemed that an acceptable method for securing something permanently, but given the fact that I won’t even be able to inspect these fasteners (well, I could tell if they were loose if the screws turn from the bottom side, but would have to open up the tip rib to tighten them if needed), I wanted something a little more permanent (maybe not actually any better, but I’ll be able to sleep better at night).

I’m going to use MS17825-3 Locking castle nuts. They are also self-locking, but these will allow me to drill a hole in the screw and insert a cotter pin. I would bet that I also stick some red loctite on them. It would be a good bet.

Then I started looking around at the other fasteners used on the tail. All of the flight controls are installed using self-locking nuts, no cotter pins or safety wires anywhere.

I thought it would be easy ($20?) to put in drilled bolts with self-locking and cotter pinned nuts, so I made the following order from ACS. This should cover all of the counterweight and flight control connection installations for the tail.

17.00 of MS17825-3 LOCKING CASTLE NUT
1.00 of MS17825-4 CASTLE NUT
1.00 of AN3-10 BOLT DRILLED
4.00 of AN3-5 BOLT DRILLED
6.00 of AN3-7 BOLT DRILLED
100.00 of MS24665-132 COTTER PIN
1.00 of AN4-14 BOLT DRILLED

Then I got started on riveting. I didn’t take these pictures until after I had gotten everything done, so no intermediate shots. Sorry.

Bottom edge of the right rudder skin. This time, I didn't forget the fairing attach strip. (I need to figure out what to do about the last two holes. I'd like to avoid blind rivets, but may need them after all.)

Looking up the rudder from the bottom of the right side.

I got all the rivets my squeezer could reach. I'll have to buck these tomorrow.

There were only two rivets that needed to be drilled out (you can see both marked on the first picture today).

Here's one; the forward-most fairing attach strip rivet on the right side... the squeezer slipped.

Here’s the other one. It’s just sitting a little proud. Probably okay, but I am anal about this stuff.

Guess what I am planning on doing to this rivet.

Also, I noticed something about the alignment of the rudder top fairing attachment holes. Look at the holes on the left side of the picture (lined up from one side to the other) and then look at the holes on the right side. It appears as if Vans put the aft-most holes in slightly different spots so the fasteners wouldn’t hit each other when installed due to the low clearance in that area.

At first I thought there was something wrong, but then realized they were just thinking ahead. Bravo.

One hour today.  18 rivets on the bottom edge, 48 on the leading edge, and 6 where I could reach on the counterbalance skin to right rudder skin lap joint. That makes 72 total for tonight. 1333 total set, 85 drilled out for a batting (drilling) average of 6.38%.

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Riveted R-912 Counterbalance Rib

March 23, 2010

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After priming the R-912 counterbalance rib and R-913 counterbalance skin last night, I thought I would get those installed on the skeleton. First thing to do is check the plans for a rivet callout.

What!? No rivet callout? That means I have to think!

No rivet callout for the R-912 to R-902 spar attachment.

I grabbed the shortest AN470AD rivet I could find…AD4-4. That seemed to be good.

This one will work.

And an after picture. Wuhoo!

Successfully set rivets.

I squeezed these. I’m still not totally happy with my squeezers ability to squeeze AD4 rivets.

Not too shabby.

Then, I grabbed the counterbalance skin and clecoed it on. My squeezer is only a 3″ yoke, so I can’t reach any of these holes.

My squeezer isn't long enough to reach these holes, and the girlfriend is outside helping me with some deck chair refinishing, so no rivet gun tonight.

Another picture of those two clecoed on the skeleton.

It's nice outside, so I had the garage door open. Lot's of sunlight in the afternoons.

Finally, I got the left skin clecoed on to check for fit and complete any remaining edge-finishing required before riveting.

Left rudder skin to counterbalance skin holes.

To be determined: whether I should edge-roll the forward edge of the rudder skin where it overlaps the counterbalance skin.

It looks good now, but might pull up when I rivet. I think I'll edge roll this. "Avery? Please send me your edge roller tool. Thank you."

Two rivets set today. Half hour total.

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Rudder Skin Prep, Skeleton Riveting

March 20, 2010

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In between some yardwork, watching the sprinklers, and cleaning up the house, I made some good progress on the airplane.

First thing, I found a stiffener rivet that was sitting a little proud. (Drilled rivet #1 today.)

Off with your head!

Silly me, though, I didn’t get any pictures of it after it was reset. I was being lazy with the camera today. Sorry.

Next up, skin deburring and dimpling.

The holes on the right are the tip rib #40 holes. The ones on the left have been drilled to #30.

After deburring, scuffing and dimpling, we are ready for priming.

The top of the right rudder skin after deburring, scuffing and dimpling.

Then, more deburring, scuffing and dimpling.

I didn't forget the hole on the bottom of the picture. This hole is match-drilled with the rudder tip and then dimpled to #30.

After cleaning, I shot a little primer on the skin.

Primed right rudder skin.

I had a very specific order here. First, deburr, scuff, dimple and prime the top, forward edge, and bottom edge. Then, while the primer is drying, devinyl the aft edge (vinyl used as masking for the primer), deburr, scuff and dimple the aft edge. This edge doesn’t get primed, as we’ll use the fuel tank sealing instructions with Pro-seal to glue the trailing edges together.

After scuffing the aft edge, I started pulling off the blue vinyl from the interior of the skins.

This just looks so nice.

Another shot of me devinyling.

Then, I spent a couple minutes making the slot at the bottom of the skin a little bigger. One of the flanges from the control horn fits in here, and during initial assembly, there was some interference.

Notch enlarged.

And the left skin, primed.

Got the left skin primed and ready for devinyling.

Ame thing on this skin, while the primer was drying, I devinyled the trailing edge, scuffed, and dimpled.

Scuffed and dimpled the trailing edge.

Here’s the left skin after devinyling. I’ll store this skin until final riveting. Now, back to the skeleton.

Shot 1 of 2 of the prepped left rudder skin.

Shot 2 of 2 of the prepped left rudder skin.

In the middle of the day, I ran out of primer and scotchbrite pads, so I ran out for both.

Napa 7220 Self Etching Primer.

Maroon scotchbrite pads.

They didn’t have any maroon on the shelf, but they had some grey. I asked the guy out front, and he went to the back and grabbed 3 unpackaged pieces. Usually, there are $5 or $6 for the three. He gave them to me for a couple dollars, which was nice.

I like them cut in about 2" x 2" squares. Good to go until the end of the tail kit, I'm guessing.

I had some trouble with dimpling the last three holes in the rudder bottom rib. I drilled and countersunk a hole in a spare piece of steel I had, then realized it was too far from the edge to work. Awesome. Here’s a shot of my second attempt.

The new hole is on the bottom right. After countersinking, I used a rivet and my flush set to dimple the rib. Not perfect, but it'll work.

Then, I moved on to some riveting.

This is the spar and one of the spar reinforcements.

While I was moving everything around getting it ready for riveting, I broke my first tool. Now, it was about $0.50 from Harbor Freight, but I was still upset.

RIP cheap plastic clamp. (I'm lying. I actually gut the orange part off the other side and threw the clamp into a box somewhere. I'm sure it will come in handy at some point, even if it doesn't have the orange pads.)

Rivets were looking good, until the one to the right of the nutplate. Doh!

Which one of these is not like the other?

After a successful drill out (#2 of the day), I finished setting the rest of the spar reinforcements and snapped these two pictures.

Middle spar reinforcement.

Upper spar reinforcement.

That’s 16 set so far.

Then I mocked up the R-405PD Rudder Horn, R-710 Horn Brace, R-917 Shim, R-902 Spar, and R-904 Bottom Rib. Some people need to use blind rivets in some of these holes, but I figured I could do it with all solid rivets.

This is what I need to end up with after riveting.

I figured out that if I take off the R-904 bottom rib, I can reach in from above (bottom right of the picture) and get the horn brace to rudder horn rivets here, then slide the forward flange of the bottom rib under the rudder horn and get those from the lightening hole. Here I am setting the horn brace to rudder horn rivets.

I think this is going to work out well.

Another shot from further away.

Here’s all four of those set (set nicely, if I may add).

Horn brace to rudder horn rivets.

20 rivets set so far. Then I moved on to the R-606PP Reinforcement plate to R-902 Spar to R-917 Shim to R-405PD Rudder horn rivets. These need to be AN470AD4-7 rivets, which are LONG. I did have to drill one of them out. That’s #3 for the day. Boo.

This is an AN470AD4-7 rivet after drilling out. This is a long rivet.

But, I managed to reset it okay and get the others in with no trouble.

R-606PP to R-902 to R-917 to R-405PD rivets.

23 set. I scratched the R-405PD horn a little, so I scotchbrited it out, and shot some primer in there.

Some primer to cover the scratch.

Next, I slid the flange of the bottom rib under the rudder horn and lined up the holes. Now I need to drop some rivets in here.

Ready for riveting.

First, I set the horn brace to bottom rib rivets.

26 rivets set so far. These are looking good.

26 set. Finally, I set three more which are reinforcement plate to spar rivets.

These are above the bottom rib, so they are only reinforcement plate to spar rivets. Easy.

I started to rivet the complicated stuff together and LOOK WHAT I DID!

I think this is hilarious. Think I should drill it out?

This happened because I was bucking from above and shooting from below. The gun jumped around cause I was supporting it’s weight instead of letting gravity help me. That’s a no-no.

It was pretty easy to drill out (#4 for the day), here’s an inside shot; back to square one.

Ready to try again.

After setting the first two, a picture.

These look good.

And after much consternation (including using my double offset set as a bucking bar), I got the two outside rivets bucked.

Finally done with riveting for the day.

30 rivets set, 4 drilled out. Lastly, I matchrdrilled the E-614-020 to R-912 rib. This was a piece of pie.

Rudder counterbalance matchrilled to the counterbalance rib. Also, there's the hardware that will be used to fasten these two together.

4.5 hours today. Not bad for a Saturday afternoon.

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Posted by Andrew

More Stiffeners, Some Skeleton

February 26, 2010

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Yes, Friday night! That means instead of being social, I get to stay home and work on the airplane. Wuhoo!

Anyway, after a good workout, I spent a couple hours in the airplane factory. First thing, I grabbed the two primed stiffeners from last night, and got them backriveted in.

#5 and #6 of 8 on the right rudder skin.

Then, I edge finished, scuffed, cleaned, and primed the last two stiffeners on the right skin. Once they were dry, I got those installed permanently, too.

#7 and #8 (two on the far left) of 8 on the right rudder skin.

I couldn’t help myself. I flipped the skin over, and removed the tape to reveal a very smooth skin. I like backriveting. The backriveting plate left some very very very small marks within about a dime sized area around the rivet heads, but I know those will polish out.

A finished right rudder skin. Those wrinkles in the vinyl in the middle where there when the skin was delivered. It didn't look like there was any damage underneath.

After spending some time admiring the right skin, I decided to finish the edges for the left skin’s stiffeners. After that, they got scuffed, cleaned, and set up on my fancy priming bench. Here they are ready for primer.

8 left skin stiffeners, ready for primer.

While those dried on one side, I decided to dive on in to the rudder skeleton. First, they have you cleco the R-904 root rib to the R-902 Spar. Tough step, but I managed.

Started on the rudder skeleton.

Then, because it was late, I had to skip the steps with the drilling and the fabricating the “shim” etc. I moved on to clecoing the spar reinforcement plates in. Here are the top two.

Fancy pants, huh?

Then, they have you grab the R-909? (tip rib) and R-912 counterbalance rib and cleco those to the spar after fluting, if necessary. It was necessary.

R-912 Counterbalance rib on the left, R-909 tip rib on the right. You can see I fluted the tip rib too much toward the aft end (top of the picture). I'll straighten it out tomorrow.

After that, they have you cleco the dreaded counterbalance skin to those two ribs. I’ve heard bad things about this step (mostly difficulty due to bad fit). Well, it was slightly difficult, but mainly due to perfect fit. If you start from the front (bottom right of the picture), everything will work out, but the fit is pretty precise. There is no slop in these prepunched kits.

The right side of the counterbalance skin clecoed on.

Then, I flipped the assembly over and clecoed on the left side of the counterbalance skin.

Left side clecoed on. (Hey, you can see my fancy fluting pliers back there.)

By then, the remaining stiffeners were dry on one side, so I shot the other side with primer and headed in for bed. (For blogging, and then bed.)

asdf

66 rivets today, all backriveted. Also, I passed 1000 rivets set today. A little bit of a milestone, although I think there are something like 20,000 rivets in the whole kit. So, I guess I’m 5% there.

Good night.

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