Total hours 2014-05-30 153.9

May 2014
Tot 30.1   Tail 27.9   Horizontal spar 7.7   Rudder 20.5   Shop 1.9

Bringing the total numbers up to:

Total 153.9

Tailkit 78.5
   horizontal spar 7.7
   rudder 33.5
   vertical spar 27.6

   tail inventory 10
Shop 34.6
Practice kit 5.5
General reading of manuals 5.0
Planning, dreaming, finances 10.0
Paperwork, ordering 20.0

Boring stuff

Lots of boring deburring to get to lots of primed parts!

Horizontal Stabilizer

With the rudder 99% done (Will wait for the pneumatic squeezer before finishing) I have started with the Horizontal Stabilizer. No pictures as all I have done so far is deburring edges and trimmed the front spar caps and stringers...

Update, found some pictures from the last session:

I usually don't mind spiders but this one looked like it could be dangerous

Eye of the tiger.... or something like that ;)

Downtime and purchase

With my wife on a business trip I have had to make other priorities for a few days. I managed to complete the rudder leading edge, put that away and started to collect all the parts for the next step.

I ordered a pneumatic squeezer from Avery.

Rudder leading edge

Started to roll the rudders leading edge. First I redid two bad rivets that I somehow missed before. Always good to give everything an extra check before closing it up.

Rudder trailing edge

Yesterday I did the trailing edge. Basically I followed the Vans way but using clamps instead of clecos to keep it fixed to the large steel plate. The result is some waviness but well within the limits :D

An hour drilling out and re-riveting

Spent an hour measuring rivets tonight. a few got some more pounding, 5 had to be redone.

More rivets, not such a good result back-riveting

More rivets, not such a good result back-riveting. A little disappointed with my newly created bar for tight places, so far it has not given a better result than the grinded down file.

Beginning to see the end of the rudder work

More rivets, closing up the weight compartment (put epoxy glue on the treads first)
Last part was grinding away on a piece of iron that I will use to indirect rivet the ones near the trailing edge.

Rudder balance weight

Tonight I had a short session, put in a few rivets, trimmed and installed the rudder weight.

Some difficult ones

Several shorter sessions. It is basically about setting the final rivets in the skins. Some are very difficult since you cannot fit a normal bar or get in the places with the squeezer.

Doing 1/8 rivets with a manual squeezer takes enormous power, I did not get them within specs so I need to attack them again when I get the pneumatic one.

Complicated, success using indirect riveting with the grinded down file 

Drilling out a bad one

Punching out the shaft

Good?

I do not like blind rivets!

Yesterday and today I had two short sessions were I put the skins together by using blind rivets to put the stiffeners together. I just don't like blind rivets. I started by putting some more fabric on part on one table.

I have also finally gotten Internet to the shop :D

No pictures of the last step as the camera battery died. I glued and clamped the top skins trailing edge.