Stjohn's RV-7

1.5 hrs
Riveted the right elevator skeleton together this morning.

Elevator control horn on, smooth as silk, no whammies.

This is the part that caused the elevator rebuild in the first place. To do this, bend the tab of the inner end rib out a ways so you can get the squeezer in on the rivets that go through the spar. Put the outer rib on after you bend the rib back into shape. I hope the skin still fits.

The whole deal, ready to get the skin put on. Yeah, the shop heads are on the wrong side on one of the reinforcing plates (except for the platenut), but it’ll be fine. Shop heads are a good size and perfectly round.
next is tha skin, baby!

1.5 hours
Primed all the elevator skeleton bits. I hate priming, but it was good to get it done. I just hate the ratio. The actual act of priming is about 15% of it. The rest is setup, letting it dry, then cleanup. Bleh.

.5 hours
Another foray into visual effects gave me a nice present of 8 weeks of 7-day workweeks on Spider Man 3, something I was promised we would never have. No family-friendly terms come to mind for what I feel like about that. None at all. But before that it was 10-12 hour days, six days a week, since about October, and several weekends were spent landscaping the yard. Shelley’s on hell time too, working on Pirates of the Caribbean 3 at Digital Domain, so there were a lot of grumpy, sit-and-watch-tv, or go-right-to-bed-after-work days. She’s still doing it, but I’m done. This might turn out to be one of those 10-year quickbuild RV’s.
Saturday, after finally cleaning up the garage a little and getting all the landscape materials and tools out of the way of my workspace, I fitted the nice new 4″ yoke on the squeezer and dimpled the right elevator skin. Although this took only five minutes or so, I spent a good amount of time staring at all the parts, trying to remember what goes where, where I was when I last downed tools, what I didn’t have that I needed, what I have now that I didn’t then, and just generally got my space back. It was at that point that I realized, I don’t have a 1-car garage. I have about half a 1-car garage. The other half is laundry machinery, hot water plumbing, and various garden-care implements.

1.5 hours.
This could have gone badly. But it didn’t. First thing that happened was that I noticed a mistake. I countersunk the bottom of the left elevator trim tab spar and dimpled the top. It’s supposed to be the other way round, because the trim tab hinge is supposed to lie flat against the inner top edge of the spar and the dimpled skin is supposed to go into the countersunk holes on the outer top. After posting a question on VAF and getting no response in the short time I waited for one (patience has never been one of my stronger qualities), I decided to match-drill the hinge and dimple it. The only answer was from an older post about flap hinges, and supposedly, countersinking, doubling, and dimpling are all acceptable options. The only drawback of dimpling the hinge is that it distorts the metal and makes it harder to get the hinge pin through the eyes. Mine became a little bit stiff, but not that much, and the hinge travels freely. I’m going to call it OK. I still have to trim off the excess hinge to bring it into line with the inboard edge of the elevator and trim tab, but that’s a no brainer. Once I get that together, I have to do the trim access plate and the trim tab horn, and we’ll be ready for deburr/dimple/prime on all the left elevator bits. Right elevator skin needs to be deburred/dimpled, and all the skeleton parts are ready for prime.

4 hours.
The whole bent-tab design on the elevators and the trim tabs of the RV series is frakking retarded. There. Got that off my chest. The elevator tab turned out messy. The inner tab looked like it got worked over by somebody looking to collect a debt or extract information. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case, it was just me. I had it clamped in the blocks, to make the bend, but during some light work with the rivet gun, it slipped and I bashed the hell out of it. The outer (upper) tab went a lot better, and looked fairly decent. In my attempts to get the lower tab looking a little better, I managed to crack the metal near the relief notch on one end. No big deal, cut the cracked part out (crack was less than 1/8″), round it out, deburr. As soon as I got that done, I bent the upper one (the good one) out just a bit so I could get to something and it cracked too. So I built a riblet. I probably could have built it out of a thinner material, but the scrap available was the same gauge as the root rib and spars. The good thing about that was that I could machine countersink it to accept dimpled skins and not have to worry about getting a dimpler inside the riblet. I like the riblet, but it cost me a couple of hours.
After that, I got going on the trim tab itself. Bending the tabs on that is much easier. And like someone said on VAF, it’s a lot easer to do any tab-bending before you bend the skins in the brake. It’s probably easier to do it before you rivet the stiffeners on, too. But I got that done, then drilled in the trim-tab hinge to the trim tab spar, and that’s where I’m at right now.

7 hours.
I’m not gonna let 2006 go by without an update. Yours truly has been a busy bee. Most of the “busy” is in trying not to frak things up by being slow, careful, and thorough. So here’s the current poo: Primed all stiffeners, riveted stiffeners to left elevator, drilled, deburred, dimpled left elevator and new right elevator skeleton. Bent tabs on the elevator skin at the trim-tab area, which didn’t turn out perfectly, but turned out OK. I was having a ratbastard of a time with the wood wedge process. The bottom tab didn’t turn out that hot.. A few dings from my not-so-wonderful work with a flat set, but the top one’s OK. At least it is now. During the process, I managed to crack the metal where the tab tapers down at the trailing edge. I wound up removing about 1/4″ of the tab, but there’s enough for some filler to get hold of.
I’ll post a picture of this soon, but right now my ftp is being weird.

1.5 hours.
I don’t know if ‘progress’ is the right word. What’s it called when you’re catching up to where you were supposed to be before you had to take two steps backwards to fix something? Today I finished manufacturing the stiffeners for the rt elevator and rudder. Deburred, and dimpled, ready for priming.. Didn’t get to that either. Next week.

1.5 hours.
Finished drilling stiffeners to Rt Elevator skin. Also fabbed rudder stiffeners from R-915’s. Let’s not kid ourselves. The only reason this is happening is because yours truly is taking another swipe at the tail control surfaces. It was boring the first time, it’s even worse this time around. I’d just as soon not look at another freaking stiffener ever again, but I need to get these parts right or I’m going to have to seriously consider buying a finished emp kit on the web.
The plan now is to get everything drilled and dimpled, then prime the whole wad all at once, since I find priming even more odious than remanufacturing stiffeners.
Injury of the day: Managed to grind off some skin from the left index finger on the Scotchbrite wheel.. Let’s hear it for shop safety.

.75 hours.
Clecoed Rt Elevator stiffeners to skins. drilled out exposed holes, need to shift clecoes and drill out the rest. Did I mention that I’m still kicking myself in the arse for having to do this again?