EMpennage/tailcone
Progress has been steady this week unlike my blog updates. Today also marks the end of my first week of meeting my 20 hour/wk goal since starting the project - this week clocked in at 21 hours. The rudder is complete, the skin is cleco'ed on to the vertical stab, and work has commenced on Section 8 - the vertical stabilizier! I'd really been sweating the riveting of the trailing edge. I used the Cleaveland Tools trailing edge squeezer dies paired with my trusty old manual squeezer. I elected to do the manual on these rivets due the the amount of control it gave me over the squeeze. I'm very pleased with the overall results! Now it was on to the next task that I haven't been looking forward to - rolling of the rudder's leading edge. The top and bottom sections came out great, but the middle gave me some fits and I did end up with minor pillowing between about the middle 6 rivets. Overall I'm pleased with the results. It is far from perfect, but as others have said, chasing perfection will turn this into a project that never gets completed. Rudder is DONE! Next up I decided to cleko the vertical stab skin onto the skeleton. I've still been waiting for an opportune time to teach my wife to operate the rivet gun so we can get this skin bucked. Right now I'm thinking I may push through until the horizontal skins need riveting, then we can make a day of getting it all wrapped up. As for the vertical, I did end up needing to trim some more off of the nose rib flanges to get them to fit into the front of the skin without buckling it or creating that bulge/dent that others have complained about. Got it done and its looking pretty good! Excited to move on to working on the horizontal stabilizer. Before work commenced, I had to take some time to pull out my other EAA workbench, get some carpet on it, and adjust the leveling feet to provide for a nice level surface across the two benches. One thing is for certain - this horizonal stabilizer is LONG! Completed 8-2 steps 1-4, and while the parts were air drying after their EkoEtch treatment, I knocked out 8-3 step 1 - riveting the inboard hinge brackets and the flange bearing. Got the rear spar parts primed and called it a day. I'll complete 8-2 tomorrow with riveting the rear spar since the primer will have been able to cure overnight.
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Productive night tonight! Got quite a bit done on the rudder - it is through the point of the halves being joined at the stiffeners and shear clips. Trailing edge wedge is taped in place and clecoed. I added an aluminum angle to the front of my workbench to hopefully help keep the TE straight. Going to let is sit until tomorrow afternoon or Wednesday for the tape to set. Good timing as my Tuesday CAP meeting tends to impact my available shop time anyway.
With my new bucket and terry cloths in hand, I decided to tackle the etching and priming of the rudder parts today. Having the bucket of clean water to wipe the parts down after etching and before final rinse with the hose made things much more efficient today. Got all of the parts etched, and while waiting for them to air dry I tackled VS section 6-5 steps 2 and 3. Like an idiot I missed the note at the end of step 2 to not attach the VS-01010-1 bottom rudder hinge bracket until the skin was riveted on. Oh well, 1 of those 4 screws/nuts had an issue anyway and wouldn't tighten up without exceeding the torque value. Not sure which the issue was with, but both will need replacing. Now that I'm going to have to take the whole bracket off, I'll order enough to replace all 4 machine screws and nuts. Lesson learned.
By this time the rudder parts were ready for priming. Got a batch of the Stewart EkoPrime mixed up and went to town. Seems to have come out pretty well! Managed to squeeze out an hour each of the last two nights to keep progress moving forward. The vertical stab. skeleton is now riveted and ready for the skin.
Today was 1 hour of completing the etching prep followed by .5 hours of setup, spray, and cleanup time. I'm really pleased with the results thus far. I'm finding this primer to spray nicely - especially given my use of a new Harbor Freight HVLP gun. The paint table I built seems to be working great as well! I did make the decision today to put off etching of the rudder parts. I don't yet have terry towels and I was finding I was wasting too much time running to the hose to rinse after only 1 or 2 parts. Decided to just spray the vertical stab parts that I had ready, and I'll tackle the rudder after assembly of the vertical.
My evening time on the plane tonight was spent prepping vertical stab and rudder parts for priming. We've decided to use Stewart Systems waterborne EkoPrime to protect the internal parts on our airplane. This primer was selected due to the lack of solvents involved in the product. This is something that was important to me for ease of application from a safety standpoint, particulalry with our garage/workshop attached to the house with a door entering right into the dining room/kitchen area. To prep the parts to accept the primer, they have to first be sprayed with an etching product and be scrubbed down with a Scotchbrite pad. This provides some "tooth" for the primer to adhere to when sprayed. No pictures tonight as it was just too messy with the chemical residue, gloves, etc.
Spent 3 hours today getting the remainder of the rudder parts ready for priming. This consisted of countersinking the trailing edge wedge and dimpling the skins. For the trailing edge wedge, I used a couple of c-clamps to secure the Cleaveland Tools jig to my drill press table. I drilled a couple of holes in the wedge piece that came in one of the practice kits and gave it a go. Was able to get the countersinks dialed in and looking good, so I went for it with the real thing. This actually seems to have come out really nice and was less than an issue than I had initially feared. I also had the countersink cage secured to the drill press with some light gauge hanging wire I found at Home Depot; this seems to have really helped. Also built a quick priming table covered in plastic netting as that will be my next step in the build....priming of the parts for both the vertical stab and rudder.
Spent 1.5 hours tonight working on the rudder. Completed section 7-4, step 2 through 7-6, step 2. The skeleton is cleko'd together and ready for disassembly, final deburring, and primer. Work today went quickly as our kit is fully match-drilled. I really only assembled the skeleton to ensure that there would be no surprises after primer.
With the vertical stab on hold until I spray primer this weekend, I decided to move on to prepping parts for the rudder to minimize the downtime. Put in 3.5 hours tonight and completed Sections 7-2 through 7-4, step 2. With our kit being new and fully final drilled, its looking like there will be minimal work to do after this before the rudder parts will also be ready for primer. One step that I do have to tackle is the dreaded countersinking of the trailing edge wedge....
Continued with Section 6 and managed to get through 6-4 Step 3 where the parts are fully prepared and ready for primer. We are going to use Stewart Systems water-based EkoPrime which requires a 2-step prep process before laying primer. It also requires that the primer be sprayed within 12 hours of prep, so doing this for the first time (new-to-me primer and paint gun) after work is not realistic. Decided to push priming these parts to Sunday when I'll have plenty of time to do it all in one go. Had my first "WTF!" moment while dimpling the VS-1001 skin. Was wrestling with opening it up enough to get to some of the harder to reach holes without scratching the hell out of it with the dimple dies when I bumped into the handle of the DRDT-2 dimpler. It closed the dies onto the skin enough to leave a nice little ding; thankfully it didn't puncture the skin. Fired my first email off to Van's Tech Support and got the go-ahead to build on - we'll just fill this dent at paint time and monitor. Also realized I've been terrible at taking pictures to document the progress. I'm blaming this on an SD card that went missing from the camera and no tripod mount for my iPhone. Both are being remedied courtesy of Amazon, so picture quantity and quality should soon improve.
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