Rudder

April 12, 2002

Here's all the parts that make up the rudder. I'm jumping ahead to prep all of the rudder parts and I will prime the rudder and vertical stab at one time.

April 13-16, 2002

Fabricated the 16 rudder stiffeners from angle stock provided. 8 are attached to the insides of the left and right rudder skins to stiffen them since the rudder skins are only .016 aluminum. A certain amount of material gets trimmed from each stiffener. Deburred all the edges and dimpled the holes.

April 17, 2002

Attached and match drilled the stiffeners to the rudder skins. As the plans state, if you have a bench or table that you don't mind drilling into, this makes it very easy as the skins lay flat. Just cleco the skins right to the table.  I had an old hollow wooden door that I clamped to the top of the bench and it worked out perfectly. Here you can see the left and right skins in progress.

 April 18, 2002

First Big - DOH!  Well, actually 2 DOH's. Came home after EAA chapter meeting and wanted to begin some finishing work on the left rudder skin. Started dimpling the stiffener holes in the skin with the C-frame and on about the 5th hole, I didn't get the male dimple lined up properly with the hole and whapped the dimpler with the hammer and put a hole through the skin. AAAAHHHHH!!! A very sick feeling overwhelms you quickly. I put a rivet in the hole to see how much of the new hole showed. Not too bad, I thought. A little filler when the plane is painted would do the trick. Finished dimpling the rest of the skin before I realized that I had not deburred the holes (DOH #2). Couldn't get the now dimpled holes deburred without opening them up further. It was at this point that I decided to throw in the towel and order another skin. For $40 and piece of mind, the new skin is on it's way. (Note: I thought the $40 was a fairly cheap mistake but after adding UPS 2nd Day air for shipping and Van's $15 handling charge, it ended up being a $141 mistake. 2nd day air is NOT worth it!)

Moral of the story is - don't go out the skunkworks late at night when your tired and start working on the project!

April 22, 2002

Completed match drilling of the right skin. Dimpled right skin with the C-frame dimpler. (No extra holes this time-see April 18 entry) Fitted rudder horn to front spar and bottom rib.