Rudder stiffener back-riveting
While I’m waiting for Julie to help me on the VS, I decided to work on the rudder a bit. Started by back-riveting the stiffeners to the skins. After reading other builders’ logs, I was being extra careful not to rivet beyond my relatively small back-riveting plate. Still, I managed to do it on the second stiffener. After that point, I used a piece of blue tape to indicate where I needed to stop. It’s too easy to get wrapped up in riveting and not notice when you’ve gone to far. Back riveting rocks. Goes fast and looks great. I had some help from some little fingers with those tiny 3-3 rivets.
This shows the riveting of the last hole and then one of the finished skins. In the first picture, note that I routed a recess in a piece of plywood for the back-riveting plate. Took a while to do that with my cranky old router, but the end result works great. No chance of scratching the skin on the edge of the plate.
Started working on the rudder skeleton. For some reason, I had a hard time with the rivets on the reinforcement plates. They kept squeezing over to the side. Had to drill out several. And then drill out two again. Very frustrating. It was tough getting to the rivets right next to the lower spar flanges. First I tried shooting the rivets. That was a disaster. Drilled them out and then discovered the longeron/flange yoke could just barely reach them.
