3 hours
Got all the rudder stuff prepped. The spars and ribs went fairly well. New confidence in metalworking skills has enabled me to attempt things I would have been scared to try before. The coolest thing I’ve learned so far is basically how to undo mistakes. For instance, I managed to bend the rudder spar. Yeah. Bent it. I was being a moron, leaning it against a corner of the workbench and putting some pressure on it to straighten out a ding left by catching the edge on the Scotchbrite wheel and it folded up like a piece of paper. But not to worry, I just bent it back into shape and hammered the flanges straight again with some light flush-set rivet gun action. holes line up, no cracks in the metal, ready to rock. I’d have freaked out big time a couple of months ago.
One thing that did kind of puzzle me was what happened when I dimpled the lower rib. R-904, I think it was. I had the squeezer in the bench vise, like i’ve had it for every dimpling op where the part is handheld, but this time, the process caused the rib to be gently bent outward from fore to aft, like the opposite of fluting. I checked everything. Dimple dies were matched, holes were drilled and deburred, there was clearance between the die and the web. Just plain ODD! So I wound up consulting the VAF board, Dan C, and Van’s, and the upshot was that fluting it back into shape was fine, just keep it from turning out twisted. So that’s what I did.. Fluted the hell out of it. Oh, and BTW, that little trick of bending the flange out so you can dimple it, then bend it back is harder than it sounds. I spent a fair bit of time smithing the rib back into shape after that.
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