Finished Elevators and Worked on Aft Three Bulkhead Assemblies

Yay! Rivets came in the mail and I was able to finally complete the elevators.

Cleaned up the edges and deburred the longerons and J stiffeners.

Matched drilled the aft bulkheads to the VS aft spar.

Countersunk the tie down support.

Dimpled the bulkheads. I think I found a problem with the plans. They called for dimpling the #30 holes in the web of the bulkhead. Note the two dimples along the edge of the tiedown bracket. they are keeping it from sitting flush against the bulkhead. I’ll likely need to undimple these holes somehow.

Match drilled the next bulkhead to the HS attach bars and dimpled the flanges.

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Likewise with the next bulkhead…

Ready for deburring, scuffing, and priming.

Today’s Time (hours):	6.0
Empennage Time (hours):	137.0
Total Time (hours):	137.0

Scuffed Parts and Skins

Started the day with a nice flight in Jared’s RV-14. We met up at KPUJ and flew down to KFFC where we met up with Wes and Skip who flew down from Cartersville in Wes’s RV-7. Lunch and a visit to Aircraft Spruce rounded out the afternoon. Then took the long way back to KPUJ. Awesome flight!

Got home and finished scuffing all the parts with some help from Sophie.

I Peeled the elevator and trim tab skins. Then I Deburred the edges and put a slight break in the trailing edge per the plans.

Finally, I scuffed the insides of the skins.

All ready to shoot primer and start dimpling tomorrow.

Today’s Time (hours):	3.0
Empennage Time (hours):	91.0
Total Time (hours):	91.0

Disassembly and Deburring

Clecoed and final drilled the elevator horns to the inboard ribs and spars.

Cut the trim tab pushrod parts and the trim tab horn parts.

Deburred everything and got about half the parts scuffed and ready for primer. Next I’ll scuff the rest of the parts, peel and scuff the skins and prime everything.

My pint of fuel tank sealant arrived from Sky Geek today. I’ll use this to glue the foam ribs in place.

Today’s Time (hours):	3.0
Empennage Time (hours):	88.0
Total Time (hours):	88.0

Elevator Parts Prep

Cut and deburred the edges of the elevator ribs and clecoed them together. Also cut and deburred the shear clips.

Straightened and fluted the tip ribs. Deburred the edges of the ribs and the counterweight skins. Clecoed everything together. Ready for drilling.

Copied the plans page with the templates for the foam trailing edge ribs and the trim tab ribs. Checked to ensure that the copy was 1:1 withe respect to the original.

Today’s Time (hours):	3.0
Empennage Time (hours):	80.0
Total Time (hours):	80.0

Countersunk spar flanges and Stringers and dimpled skins

Machine countersunk the flanges of both spars.

Used the blunted soldering iron to remove the blue plastic from the rivet lines. Then used a file and sand paper to clean up the edges. They were pretty rough.

Used the trusty DRDT-2 to dimple the skins. Good upper body workout. Lots of holes!

Tada…

Ribs, stringers, and skins all ready for scuff and prime.

Today’s Time (hours):	3.0
Empennage Time (hours):	64.0
Total Time (hours):	64.0

Prepared HS Ribs

Deburred all the HS ribs with 400 grit sand paper. Sand paper seemed like the most straightforward approach because of all the segments in the flanges. I was able to get in between the segments with it.

I fluted the ribs and modified the two nose ribs and two inspar ribs per the plans and marked them.

I drilled the inboard nose and inspar ribs to the forward spar. Then I deburred all the holes in all the ribs and then dimpled all the ones that mate up to the skins. So. Many. Holes. I can’t even imagine what the wings are going to be like.

I also created a template to make cradles to hold the HS when assembling. I’ll scrounge some plywood to cut them from and some sort of square stock for the bases.

Today’s Time (hours):	3.0
Empennage Time (hours):	61.0
Total Time (hours):	61.0

Horizontal Stabilizer Front Spar

Got the font spar to the point where it’s ready to be scuffed and primed. This was way more work than it looked like in the plans. It all started with the spar caps. They had to be trimmed and deburred. Then they’re match drilled to the spar web. Then disassembled, deburred, reassembled. Then they are match drilled to the spar flanges, disassembled and deburred. There were approximately a million and one holes drilled and deburred in these things.

Then on to the spar doubler. The usual drill (no pun intended)… Deburr edges, fit, cleco, final drill, disassemble, deburr holes.

Countersunk twelve of the holes on the doubler.

And here are all the front spar parts ready for scuff and prime.

Today’s Time (hours):	5.0
Empennage Time (hours):	53.5
Total Time (hours):	53.5

Horizontal Stabilizer Rear Spar

Started work on the horizontal stabilizer today. The first part involves preparing the rear spar.

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Deburred the rear spar and the rear spar doubler with the Scotch Brite wheel, files, a deburring tool and god old fashioned sandpaper. Got all the edges and lightening holes nice and smooth. Clecoed the rear spar doubler to the rear spar. Final drilled all the holes.

Clecoed the 8 outboard hinge brackets to the spar and final drilled.

Machine countersunk the two holes in the center of the spar.

Fit, clecoed, drilled, disassembled, deburred, reassembled, and riveted the inboard hinge bracket assembly with the flange bearing in the middle.

Deburred and scuffed everything. Ready for primer. I’m only going to prime the inside of the spar. the outside will be painted when I paint the airplane. I neglected to account for this when I built the VS and rudder. I’m assuming the primer can be stripped from the outside of those spars in preparation for painting.

Today’s Time (hours):	2.5
Empennage Time (hours):	48.5
Total Time (hours):	48.5

Back to the Vertical Stabilizer

Got all my VS replacement parts from Vans and now that I’ve completed the rudder I can go back and finish the VS. Tonight I cut, fit, clecoed, drilled, disassembled, deburred and dimpled all the parts. Next I’ll scuff and prime them and then rivet everything together. I hope to have the VS all buttoned up next weekend.

Today’s Time (hours):	2.0
Empennage Time (hours):	43.0
Total Time (hours):	43.0

More work on rudder substructure and skins

Match drilled the spar to the reinforcement plates, rudder horn, shim, and bottom rib. Radiused the forward corners and fluted the counterbalance rib and top rib.

Trimmed, drilled, and deburred rudder skins. Match drilled the top rib and counterbalance rib to the spar.

Match drilled the counterbalance to the counterbalance rib. Dimpled the counterbalance rib and machine countersunk the counterbalance.

All of my back ordered parts from Van’s Aircraft arrived today.

Hopefully all of the replacement VS parts I ordered will arrive tomorrow and I can prep them for priming along with all the rudder parts over the weekend.

Today’s Time (hours):	2.5
Empennage Time (hours):	20.5
Total Time (hours):	20.5