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November 25, 2004: (1.0 hr.) Today is Thanksgiving and I managed to sneak out to the shop and get a little work done on the plane. Since the rudder leading edge Pro Seal is still drying, I started on the left and right elevator. This looks like it is going to be similar in construction to the rudder. The first order of business was to cut out and grind all the elevator stiffeners. I put my band saw and disc sander to good use for this job. |
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November 17, 2004: (5.0
hr.) Today was my birthday and I decided to spend some 'me' time by
getting back to work on the plane. I got a lot accomplished today
with not much to show for it.
I hand filed all the edges of the stiffeners to remove any milling marks. Next, I used the Scotchbrite wheel in my drill press to smooth all the edges. |
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I followed that up by
using the Scotchbrite Pad wheel to strip the surface of stiffeners down
in preparation for painting.
Boy! There are a lot of stiffeners when you tackle building both the left and right elevators at the same time. |
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Once the stiffeners were completed, I cleco'd them to the elevator skins and matched drilled everything. Next, I took all the stiffeners back off the elevators and deburred all the holes. |
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Before I could deburr the holes in the elevator skins, I needed to remove the surrounding plastic. I used the steel straight edge and hot soldering iron to cut the plastic. |
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December
19, 2004: (1.0
hr.) I did not have much time to work on the plane this
weekend. The hour I did get to work on it, I focused on dimpling
the stiffeners and elevator skins
I used the c-frame dimpler to get most of the holes in the skin. However, since I did not have someone helping me hold the skins open, it was tough to reach the holes near the trailing edge. |
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I used my blind riveter and a special set of dimpling dies to reach the holes close to the trailing edge. The next thing to do is to prep and prime the stiffeners, back rivet the stiffeners to the skin, and then bend the trailing edge. I probably wont get to any of that until after the holidays. |