Making Stiffeners and Match Drilling – 4 hrs

Today I made stiffeners for the Rudder. There are a total of 16 in 8 different lengths. My technique was to cut the stock material to length with snips, mark the profile of the tapered end with a Sharpie, rough cut the taper on the band saw, finish shape on the belt sander, and smooth the edges with the scotchbrite wheel. The first couple were slow, but I got faster as I went. Here is a view of the sixteen finished stiffeners on the left rudder skin.

By the way, the little notches Vans puts on the angle stock to tell you where to trim really do save time.

Next I laid the stiffeners out on the skin and match drilled #40. I marked each stiffener with L1 – L8, or R1 – R8 to make sure I can match them up the same way later. Here is a shot of the match drilling process.

Then I removed the blue film from the left rudder skin to prepare for dimpling and deburring. This is one of my least favorite parts of the building process. I could skip it and just remove the film completely but I really like to preserve the pristine look of the skin during the assembly process and leaving the film intact on most of the skin helps. But it is time consuming. It took over an hour to remove the strips from both sides with a soldering iron. Here is what it looks like. I still need to so the same thing to the right side skin.