Julie had some time to help me, so we riveted up the VS. I squeezed the rivets at the top and bottom edges. I’m leaving the rear spar just clecoed until the technical advisor comes by. It’s so cool to get another component done.
Riveted on the rudder horn. I’m not too proud to use pop rivets. This is not an area where it matters, and it’s very difficult to get a yoke in there.
Riveted on the counterweight skin with the handy thin nose yoke. (It’s out of focus, but there is also some overspray contributing to the fuzziness. I primed the outside of the skin where it is overlapped by the rudder skins.)
Attached the lead weight. Had to do some minor trimming of the weight in order to make it fit around the rivet heads that are now present.
I also screwed up using the torque wrench. The bolts holding on the counterweights are AN509’s, so I stupidly used the torque value for AN5 bolts. They’re actually AN3 sized “structural screws.” After way over-torquing these bolts, I’m going to order some new ones. That puts a halt on further rudder progress for a while. Bummer. At least it should be a cheap part to replace.
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.
Riveted together the VS rear spar. Riveted the ribs to the front spar. Clecoed the skin to the partial skeleton. It’s great to be putting stuff together again.
I had to drill out a couple of rivets that squeezed too much to the side. I’m doing better than on the HS, but still having this problem. I’m sure it will get better with experience. I’m definitely good at drilling out rivets.
Sorted out all of the parts after priming and clecoed together the VS skeleton.
The primer was a little light on a few of the parts, so I hit them with a little more primer after roughing them up a bit.
Etched and primed the rudder and VS. Since I did both at the same time, this entry is to spread some of the time to the VS. The rudder definitely had many more parts with all of the stiffeners, so it gets the majority of the time.
See the rudder entry from this same day for more details.
Total day was 5.0 hours.
Long day. On top of flying, I also etched all of the rudder and VS parts, including washing the skins and spars that were too big for the sink. I also primed everything. All of the washing, etching, and set up takes longer than the actual painting.
The painting went really well this time. Cranking up the kerosene heater in the now insulated garage got it up to about 80 degrees. The paint was drying very nicely at that temp. It took about 3-4 coats to get everything coated nicely. Let it dry half an hour and flipped everything over to paint the other side.
The air inside the paint booth definitely got nasty after a while. It had a strong ammonia smell that the respirator wasn’t eliminating. During the halftime break, I pointed a fan into the booth opening and opened the garage door for a while. That helped. It still is definitely not as bad as spraying a solvent-based paint.
Total time today was 5.0 hours, which was split between the rudder and VS.
Ended up flying today, so I didn’t get the priming done. I did manage to wash all of the rudder parts and most of the VS parts.
Set up the painting booth. It only took about 15 minutes to set up. It should be easy enough to assemble and disassemble when I need to prime. It’s 6′ by 7′ by 6′6″ tall. Small enough to fit in the garage while still allowing the door to open. And should be large enough to hold lots of stuff. We’ll see tomorrow.
