.5 hours
Didn’t get to work on the plane this weekend.. The bastards got me on 6 day weeks again. But whatever, the more they make me work, the faster I get all the airplane bits. What I did get done tonight though, was countersinking the AEX wedge for the rudder and dimpling the aft row of holes on the rudder skins. I need to make some sort of scale for the proseal glop so I can measure 10:1, but I’m not going to try that at 10pm on a schoolnight. If, by some miracle, I don’t have to work the weekend, I’ll try to get that done. I don’t want to order a triple-beam scale off the internet, I don’t need to be on any watchlists. But building a simple 10:1 thing should be easy enough. Hmm.. do I have enough scrap aluminum around? I think so.
countersinking.
WINGS!
2 hours.
First legit entry in the wings category! Not because I’m finished with the empennage or anything, but here’s how it goes: After doing some tests on some scrap with both JB Weld and 3M 5200 Marine Adhesive (recommended somewhere), it became evident that neither of those substances were going to hold up during back-riveting the trailing edge of the rudder. So I bit the bullet and ordered a pint of proseal from Spruce, which should be here in a couple of days. I’m not about to mess up another rudder, this one’s gotta be the one, so I’m going to bond the TE together against an angle piece, then rivet just like the book says when the proseal bond cures. But while I’m waiting for that to show up, I have the rest of the airplane to work on, so I went for the aileron brackets. This is out of sequence, but also in that Spruce order is my drill jig for holding tubes in place in the drill press, which I need for the aileron pushrods, among other tubular activities. Everything went well, except for I got a little carried away with the countersink bit and countersunk more holes on W414A-L than I should have. So I’ve got an email into Van’s to see if this is kosher or if I need to order a new one. Since this is the attach point for a control surface, I’m guessing they’ll tell me to suck it up and rebuild it. No big deal, it’s not a huge piece, and I haven’t drilled it to the wing yet. But I went ahead and finished it using AD426 rivets along the countersunk row just in case they tell me it’s OK.
Rudder 2.0 stiffeners
2 hours.
Finished deburring rudder skin edges and dimpling stiffener holes. Riveted stiffeners to right side, half done with left.
More rudder
2 hours.
Just got back from Vegas. Every time I go to that city, It reaffirms my belief that the United States is the greatest nation on the face of the planet, bar none. Not sure why, but that’s where it happens. Before I left, I started stripping the old rudder for usable parts, which was the rod-bearing reinforcing plates, the counterweight, and the counterweight hardware. Today I got the R917 shim fabbed, as well as the bottom-attach strips, trimmed the reinforcing part that attaches to the control horn (can’t remember the R number), and clecoed all things skeletal together in prep for drilling out.