Building Up the Rudder – 6 hrs

This post is for Saturday Feb 27, 2010

Today was a little erratic since there were three different subcontractors in my house working on the kitchen while I worked on the rudder. My productivity was slammed since I was frequently breaking off to check on them or answer a question. But I made decent progress anyway.

I started by back riveting the stiffeners on the right rudder skin. I like this process because it produces almost perfect rivets on both sides and the process is pretty fast. My back rivet plate is a little short so I had to keep checking to make sure I wasn’t working near an edge because I have read about the nasty results if you shot it off the edge on other web sites.

Here is one stiffener after riveting.

And here it is after all the stiffeners on this side were installed. Pretty painless.

Next I started piecing together the skeleton. There is the usual clecoing of spar to ribs and I match drilled through the R-904 rib for one of the hinge bearings I also had to cut and trim the R-405PD rudder horn to make it fit (per the drawing instructions). I’m guessing this part is used in different forms on different kits and each is modified by the builder. But I could be wrong. Anyway, the modification was easy with the snips and the belt sander. I tried to minimize the material removed to make sure maximum edge distances were retained.

The instructions say to radius the end of the R-405PD rudder horn if necessary to make it fit nice and flat against the flange of the R-904 rib. I have learned that whenever the Vans plans say “if necessary” you can pretty much count on it. I used the belt sander and the scotchbrite wheel to cut and smooth the edge of the part. You can see it here.

Then I cut out the R-917 shim from stock provided in the kit. Be careful here. There is one strip of material provided for the R-917 and the two R-918s with only about 1/2 inch of excess length. If you make a mistake cutting a part you may be waiting for Vans to send you a replacement part. Anyway, after measuring twice its just a straight cut and trim to length. Then I assembled the horn to the spar with the shim and R-904 rib as instructed and drilled the holes in the shim.

That clamp with the sticker still on it was a $6.99 bargain at Harbor Freight Tools. I picked up two Thursday night on the way home from work. Those things are about $18 each at Home Depot.

Then I cleco’d the reinforcement plates onto the spar and fluted the R-903 and R-912 ribs to make them straight and true and cleco’d them onto the spar and match drilled the holes to the spar.

Then I installed the R-913 counterbalance skin and match drilled the holes to the ribs and spar. That skin is a tight fit. I had to work it a bit to get it on.

Then I put the right skin on to make sure everything lined up properly. I found that the notch in the skin for the R-405PD rudder horn was a little too narrow so I widened it with a pin file. It didn’t take much to get it to fit.

Then I jumped back to the stiffeners for the left side skin which I didn’t finish preping last night. The same process as before except I didn’t want to wait over night to install them so I primed with Dupli-Color self etch then warmed them with a small electric heater blowing across the ribs to a toasty 80 – 90 degrees F for a half hour or so. That stuff dries fast as it is but the warm air really kicks it over.

Then I back riveted the stiffeners onto the left skin and cleco’d it onto the skeleton with his brother.