Stjohn's RV-7

these are a few pics of the state of the Left side HS. This primer sucks, it’s not doing a wonderful job of hanging on under the duress of the bucking bar. But that’s a lesson learned for next time.. If I have to prime anything else, I’ll use a 2-part epoxy primer and alodine the parts like I’m supposed to.

This is the current state of the empennage.. One side at a stopping point while I determing whether or not I can close it up.

This is a shot of the space between the forward spar, outboard of the middle rib. The rivets that are done are for the top side.

Another shot of the aft middle rib, which shows the blind rivets securing it to the forward spar.

Yet another shot of same, a little closer. Still working out the best way to photograph this stuff.

Bottom side rivets on center and center nose ribs. Yes, there will be some buffing and polishing. Or that’s where the black stripe on the HS will go at paint time.

Top side rivets.

Middle Nose rib. Notice the dings in the primer. I’m going to sand these down where there are deep scratches and shoot some primer in over them before closing.

Another view of the middle aft rib connecting to the forward spar.. The weird ghosting is from camera jitter (my jitter).

Same rib, this time showing the aftmost rivets

Middle nose rib again, but this shot’s just cool.

Wider angle of fwd spar and middle main rib.

This is part of the aft spar, showing shop heads on the thicker channel (they’re not all facing this way, but the metal’s not warped).

Elevator hinge with 5/32 rivets instead of 1/8. See earlier entry for details.

Back inside now, looking at the oops where I patched a hole from a missed dimpling hit. The notch cut into the spar is fully deburred, and not contacting the patch rivet, even though it looks like it. This oops is about 3/4 of the way outboard from center. BTW, I’ll be going over those scratches in the primer as well.

Pointing to the space along the span where the oops is..

For perspective, this is where the oops is, but on the opposite side of where the mirror’s pointing to. This is just to show how far outboard the oops is.