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.
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.
Scuffed and primed the skins, ribs, stringers and center web.
Riveted together the inboard ribs, web, and stringers.
Clecoed and riveted the ribs to the front spar
Clecoed and riveted four nose ribs to the skins. Special thanks to Jared Solomon for lending me his HS cradles. Also for the awesome flight flight yesterday in his RV-14. Makes me want to build faster.
Clecoed the forward spar and associated substructure to the skins. Ready for final riveting. Should have the HS buttoned up tomorrow!
Scuffed the forward spar and primed all of the forward and rear spar parts.
Riveted the front spar doubler. Used the squeezer for most of these.
Riveted all of the hinge brackets. Used the gun for these. My riveting skills have improved markedly. I haven’t had to drill any rivets since working on the rudder.
I bolted the inboard hinge bracket to the spar per the plans and realized I don’t have an in/lb torque wrench. So I ordered one from Amazon along with some tamperproof marker paint so I can keep track of which nuts have been torqued and easily inspect them later.
Off to FLL for work for the next few days. So no further progress expected until later in the week.
Started work on the horizontal stabilizer today. The first part involves preparing the rear spar.
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.
Scuffed and prepped the new parts. Then sprayed them with primer.
Riveted the doubler and ribs to the forward spar.
Clecoed the skin to the forward spar and ribs and started riveting.
Finished riveting the skin to the forward spar and ribs.
Clecoed and riveted the rear spar to the skin and ribs.
VS Complete! Very pleased with how well it turned out. Once I replaced the parts I messed up, everything went smoothly. I’m much happier with my workmanship than the first attempt. A little experience makes a world of difference.
Rearranged the work benches and started picking parts for the horizontal stabilizer.
I primed all the rudder parts and skins today. I picked up a roll of hardware mesh at Home Depot and put it up on some blocks over my paint table. I did this to keep all the small pieces from being blown around by the spray gun. It worked really well.
All dressed up and no place to go!
I got the shipment of VS replacement parts from Van’s today. Unfortunately only four of the five parts I ordered arrived. They shipped the wrong part for the fifth on. I ordered a VS-705 they shipped an E-705. I called and they’re shipping the correct one. Oh well. I’ll just continue on with the rudder until it arrives.
I riveted together the spar, reinforcement plates, counterweight rib, bottom rib, rudder horn and shim. The I screwed up and riveted the rudder attach nut plates to the wrong side of the spar. Drilled them out and re-riveted correctly. Cost me six rivets and an extra thirty minutes. No harm no foul.
I’m still struggling with my riveting technique with the gun. There was one rivet on the rudder horn that couldn’t be reached with the squeezer. I managed to put a big smile into the rudder horn. I think it will be okay.
I made a drill guide from a paint stirrer so that I could more accurately drill perpendicular to the chord of the rudder. I cut a 6 degree angle on the end and held it flush to the rudder and aligned the drill to the edge of the stick.
Off to Vegas tomorrow for a conference. won’t be making ay progress until next weekend.
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.
I’ve been using a single flute de-burring bit in my drill on the low speed setting to deburr all the holes. It seems to work pretty well. I hit it with about two turns and light pressure. That leaves a nice clean finish without enlarging the hole or leaving a visible chamfer.
Today I dispelled the notion that this airplane is going to be perfect. I was trying to de-burr the edges of the skin on the scotch bright wheel and accidentally touched the other side of the skin to the grinding wheel. It hit the top corner of the skin and bent it a bit and took a nick out of the edge. I was able to straighten it. It was only bent a few degrees. I was also able to file the nick out of the edge. Probably not the worst mistake I’ll make. It only cost me about ten minutes.
I picked up a bit extension from home depot yesterday so that I could use the de-burring bit on the insides of the flanges. This kept the bit sufficiently straight and produced an acceptable result.
Used a maroon scotch bright pad and scuffed everything up. Ready for priming.
Ron's RV-14A Build Log 