DATE: 2024-08-27 TIME: 6:30
EJ and I started the day pretty early with assembling the stiffeners as required, moved on to riveting the doubler plates to the forward rudder spar R-1002.
After that the stiffeners were attached to the right and left skins using the back riveting technique which provides the best finish. Unfortunately the backing plate we were using did not stretch the whole width of the skin and we bounced the R-1015A with the back riveter while it was not on the plate. Fortunately it did not do any damage but we were a lot more careful regarding the back riveting plates location after that.
Once we got the stiffeners attached to the skins we attached the top R-1003A and B, and the bottom R-1004 ribs. The R-1003A and B were attached by back riveting but this wasn’t possible with the R-1004 which was attached using the swivel flush mushroom set and a bucking bar. The trailing edge rivet was not accessible this way so the forward rivets were squeezed and I made a home made “bucking bar” to get the trailing edge rivet set properly. Check out the pictures to see what I mean.
We got completed to the point where we had the trailing edge glued to the right skin and cleco attached per the instructions but had to stop there pending inspection by my technical counselor, John DeYager at the Columbia, TN, EAA Chapter.
Video is coming. I’m just encoding and compressing it for web streaming.