Let’s get the bad news out of the way of the bat: you astute observers may have noticed that yes, I’ve switched components again and it’s back to the v-stab.  The short story is that in an extended moment of frustration working with the rudder counterweight skin, I kind of brute-forced things to get them to fit.  I knew when I did it that it wasn’t the best thing, and once I had a couple days to think about it, I decided that while it might have been OK, I didn’t want it on my plane.  Hooray, another replacement parts order for the folks at Van’s!

Fortunately, only a day or two later, my new parts for the v-stab came in.  This past weekend was mostly booked solid, but I had Labor Day off.  After sleeping in a bit to recover from a long weekend, I hit the garage running.  First order of business was to get the new parts ready to roll; after a good long session of match-drilling, dimpling, deburring, fluting, etc, that was covered.  Then it was out to the driveway to clean the parts prior to priming.  They dried quickly in the sun, out came the primer, and it was time for assembly.

Now, some of you might recall the very tough time I’ve had getting the root ribs riveted to the front spar.  I already re-ordered the nose rib once, then re-ruined it, along with the spar and main rib, prompting this most recent parts order.  But I also acquired a Main Squeeze rivet squeezer from Cleaveland Tool, along with a thin-nose yoke, figuring that this would help me get into the tight space and get those ribs riveted.  I’m pleased to report that I was correct.  Yes, I finally got those ribs riveted to the spar.  Re-riveting the other two ribs was a cakewalk, and wonder of wonders, it was finally time to start riveting the skin!

Riveting the h-stab was good practice for this; that taught me some good techniques for holding the bucking bar in the tight space inside the part.  The v-stab is actually thicker than the h-stab, so in a way it’s easier to do the riveting.  I made pretty short work of getting the hard-to-reach skin rivets done.  Then, I clecoed on the rear spar, which had been waiting patiently for about three months since I finished it. (I just looked back at that post, where I opined that I might be riveting the skin on in no time.  Pretty humorous in retrospect…)

I started working on the skin rivets on the edge, all of which can be reached with the squeezer.  I figured that I’d be able to knock these out, rivet the rear spar to the rest of the skeleton, and have myself another finished component.  But I ended up with some odd problems.  I botched one of the first rivets I set; the shop head is way too thin.  I think I somehow used the wrong length rivet.  Then things got weirder still.  I ran across several holes where the rivets simply wouldn’t sit flush with the skin.  I can only assume that way back when, some of these holes didn’t get dimpled enough.  Fun thing to find when all the stuff is mostly permanently assembled.  Luckily, I was able to clean up the shallow dimples I found by simply using the dimple dies in the squeezer and hitting the skin and skeleton together.  Maybe not the best way to do it, but at least the rivets sat flush.

I squeezed a number of rivets on one side, but a look at the clock made me decide to call it a night.  It was going on 10:30, and I knew I had a couple rivets to drill out later on, plus most likely some more work with the rivet gun, which the neighbors might not appreciate. (particularly since I was working with the garage door open today)  I could also feel myself starting to get a bit sloppy.  Plus, it’s an unwritten rule that, following completion of the v-stab, the builder must prop them on his workbench in the rough position they’ll sit on the aircraft and take a picture while grinning madly and holding the v-stab up.  Seeing as how my h-stab is hanging from the ceiling, I didn’t want to deal with taking it down. (and I knew that if I did finish the v-stab, I’d be unable to stop myself from getting it down for the photo op)

So I’ll go out tomorrow after work and finish this thing up.  And, of course, get the required photo.  Hopefully my new rudder parts come soon so I can keep working…not much reason to hurry right now, since the wing kit isn’t ordered yet, but I’m feeling some momentum and would like to capitalize on it.  I’m having fun out there!

The rivets that gave me so much trouble, finally tamed by the Main Squeeze:

Mostly assembled stab, waiting for a recuperated builder to finish it:

Yup, last week went pretty much as I expected at work.  Not much time for working in the garage until today.  Anyways, today’s first order of business was to fabricate a couple parts.  The plans call for R-716 and -717, a spacer piece and rudder bottom attach strips respectively, but these pieces aren’t included in the kit.  Turns out this is what the previously-mysterious “trim bundle” is for; it’s some pieces of alclad sheet of various sizes and thicknesses.  I found the appropriate pieces of aluminum, and thanks to the wonders of my bandsaw, I had my pieces cut up in no time. (in fairness, they’re pretty simple)

Next up is trimming the notorious R-710 rudder horn brace.  This fits between the root rib and the control horn, but as supplied it needs some material removed.  From reading other builder’s notes, I learned that it’s a common problem to remove too much material here and end up with unsatisfactory edge distance.  There are holes marked for the trim line, but given the common problem, I didn’t trust them.  Instead I temporarily put the root rib and control horn together, then used them as a guide to mark my initial cut lines on the brace.  The snips made quick work of these cuts.  On my first test fit, I found I needed to remove more material, which is exactly what I wanted.  A few more trial fits and some work on the belt sander, and everything fit together nicely.

The next bit of fun was the R-703 tip rib.  This rib has an additional strip that wraps around it, which will eventually house the counterweight and serve as an attach point for the fiberglass tip fairing.  The directions provide the deceptively simple instruction to “flute the leading edge until the holes line up with the R-713 attach strip.” Well, try as I might with my fluting pliers, I could not flute that thing sufficiently enough to get those holes to align.  The pliers also made such a wide flute that by this point, the holes themselves were not flat any more. (something I learned today: I need better fluting pliers)  So I got out the hand seamers, straightened that flange, and tried to come up with an alternate solution that didn’t involve stopping for a few days to wait for new tools.  Eventually I built a jig of sorts out of scrap wood, with which I was able to make a much tighter flute and get everything lined up.  Whew!

Next up, the whole skeleton goes together and there’s a lot of match-drilling to be done between the various pieces.  Nothing complicated here, just semi-tedious work.  After this, the next thing was to clamp those attach strips I fabbed up earlier and get them drilled.  However, I have some plans tonight, so I decided this was a good point to call it a day and get inside for a shower.  It looks like I should be able to finish my prep work and get everything cleaned and primed tomorrow.  Not sure if I’ll get around to any riveting, but we’ll see!

I wasn’t too good with photos today.  All you get is this photo of the temporary rudder assembly, complete except for those attach strips:

Brief summary: Time to order more parts.  I started today by pulling the VS-704 and -705 ribs off the v-stab spar, flattening the bent flanges, and then inspecting them.  There were indeed some holes that were a bit oversize.  Just for fun, I reassembled the skeleton in the v-stab skin, and found that the now-oversize holes don’t exactly line up, presumably due to all the bending/rebending/etc.  So I’ve decided to replace both the ribs as well as the VS-702 forward spar.  In a way, it’s just as well…I wasn’t going to try riveting that pesky spot again until I got my new squeezer, so I might as well wait for new parts while I’m also waiting for new tools.

In keeping with my new habit of “stop sulking about broken stuff and get back to work,” I moved back to working on the rudder.  Yesterday I’d back riveted the stiffeners on the starboard side, with the exception of the three rivets closest to the trailing edge. (I wanted a second set of hands to hold the skin out of the way while I did those)  I had help available today, but didn’t want to trouble her unnecessarily, so I decided to go ahead and repeat this task on the port side.  Then I could just recruit Josie for 15-20 minutes, and wrap up the back riveting.  Flawless plan!

Well, not quite.  Most of the back riveting went great; it really is a technique that makes things go fast without compromising quality.  But then the time came to hit those rivets on the trailing edge.  What I didn’t think about was what might happen with all the stiffeners in place, but the trailing edges not secured.  When we started and Josie held the skin back, the trailing ends of the stiffeners on her side of the skin popped out, thus getting all up in my way again.  We had to improvise a bit; on the first side of the skin, I hit all but the aft-most rivet on each stiffener, which was the one that was really interfered with by the opposite stiffeners popping out.  We then flipped the skin, and I was able to hit all the rivets; with just that one rivet on each stiffener unbucked, interference wasn’t a problem.  Then we flipped once more and I hit up those last rivets.

So there’s a lesson for when I get to the elevators…finish the stiffeners on one side completely before going to the other side.  Sometimes plans for efficiency can have the exact opposite effect.

At this point, the next step was to bend the trailing edge.  The rudder skin comes pre-bent, but only partially.  This gives the builder room to get in there and rivet the stiffeners; once those are in place, the trailing edge is bent to the “final” degree.  Doing this bend requires a homemade bending brake, which is just a couple 2×8 pieces attached with hinges.  The trailing edge goes between the planks, they get squeezed together, and the end result is a nice bend.

I didn’t have the materials, so a quick trip to Lowe’s before they closed was called for. (plus it was way past time for dinner)  Back home, the brake went together in no time.  I clamped the brake to the workbench, laid the skin in place, supported the other end of the skin with some 2×4 scrap, and then clamped the skin down to keep it from moving.  Josie came back out to help and we got the bend done in no time. (I was so excited that I forgot to get pictures of the brake setup!)  I then clecoed the spar and ribs into place to check the trailing edge for straightness…it looks GREAT!

I was kind of surprised how easy the bend was.  I’d done some reading on the procedure beforehand, and found a guy who claimed to have agonized over getting this bend right for weeks.  I guess I can see how this bend is a real commitment, where a mistake means it’s time to start over, but on the other hand the bending setup is pretty elementary.

I wrapped up the evening by reading ahead in the rudder instructions and trying to visualize how the parts will go together.  I’m anxious to keep rolling on this, but other things will probably get in the way.  There’s a big deadline approaching at work, and we’ve been put on notice that there will most likely be some long days ahead this week…so I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get much, if any, time in the garage until next weekend.  Still, despite the setbacks I’ve had with the v-stab, I’m still making forward progress and getting things done.  I could work faster and be more productive, but the truth is it’ll be another month or two before I can order the wing kit, which in turn has an eight-week lead time.  So no matter what, I probably won’t have my wing kit here until near the end of the year.

Rudder skin with stiffeners in place: (note how wide the bend is compared to the next photo)

Freshly bent skin with spar and ribs installed:

Wow, I really went two weeks without working on this thing.  I had an excuse for last weekend-I was out of town-but the rest of it, well, I’ve got nothing.  I think part of the problem was that the sense of accomplishment when I finished the h-stab made my brain go into “finished” mode.  It was almost like going back out and working on the v-stab was like starting a new project.  But anyway, I finally got back to work today.

The good news is that the next component, the vertical stab, has a fair amount of work into it already and, barring any obstacles, could be done pretty quickly.  Previously, I’d gotten almost all the skeleton work done, with the exception of some annoying rivets.  Along the way, I’d damaged the root nose rib and decided to order a new one.  So today, I started out by drilling out the one good rivet I had and removing the old nose rib.  Then I had to prep the new rib…nothing exciting here, match-drilling, dimpling, edge finishing, prepping for primer, priming.  Easy.

Of course, there were some necessary waiting periods in there while the cleaned rib dried, and between coats of primer.  I used this time to fix the figure-8 dimple I put in the v-stab skin way back when.  I used the rivet gun with flush set and my back rivet plate to pound the dimple flat, cleaned up the edges of the extra hole, redimpled, and checked for cracks.  A good deburr and it was time for an epoxy patch.

That only took up one waiting period, so I next went back to the rudder I started on, also way back when.  I had one hole that needed an oops rivet; I clamped the stiffener in place, drilled to #30, deburred, no biggie.  I then set about back riveting the stiffeners on the starboard side.  Since I didn’t have a helper out in the garage today, I left the three trailing rivets on each stiffener undone; I want a second set of hands to hold the skin out of the way while I do those.

Oh hey, primer’s dry!  Let’s see if we can get this skeleton riveted together finally.  Those who have been following along know that I had a lot of frustration riveting this before.  I’d like to tell you that there was no frustration tonight, but that would be a horrible lie.  I did get the center rivet bucked on the second try.  Then I proceeded to foul up both end rivets.  Then I proceeded to bend the rib flange a bit while drilling those out.  Then it was quitting time. (Josie and I are going out tonight)  I’m not sure at this point if the nose rib can be saved; I’ll have to drill out that good center rivet and pull things apart again to see if I can straighten the flange acceptably.

So yeah, I got a fair amount done today, but I’m back in the land of frustration with these same three rivets.  Maybe it’s time to cough up for a Cleavaland Main Squeeze- I tried one at Oshkosh and it was truly an amazing tool.  With a no-hole yoke, I think I could squeeze these without a lot of problem; and given the low effort of the Main Squeeze, I’ll be a lot less likely to twist the squeezer while squeezing.  Hooray for more tool spending!

For those of you that sat through all this, your reward is a picture of me getting ready to drill out a rivet:

Short version: the first major assembly of my RV is DONE!

First task of the day was to get the front spar blind riveted to the HS-707 and -708 ribs.  Easy enough, then it was on to riveting the front spar to the skin, followed by the HS-708 main rib.  Not too bad here either; I’m starting to get a pretty good feel for bucking rivets without a lot of hit-check-hit some more-check again-etc.  I did get a little overconfident though…had a couple of bad rivets, but I’m also getting pretty good at drilling out.  Not perfect though-I did have one hole I enlarged.  No worries though-I drilled out to #30 and dipped into my supply of oops rivets.

I also noticed a change in my attitude as I was working today.  Previously, if I fouled up a rivet or made some other mistake, I was prone to getting annoyed, stewing about it, beating myself up, and generally reacting in a nonproductive way.  Today, it was just businesslike: Bad rivet?  OK, drill it out and replace.  Instead of wasting time thinking about my foul-up, I’d fix it in five minutes and be on my way.

Anyway, with the front spar and main rib set, next step was to cleco the rear spar assembly in place, then rivet it and the visible ribs to the skin.  Nothing complex here, just a lot of squeezing.  (Side note: I played with a Cleaveland Tool “Main Squeeze” at Oshkosh.  Boy, I wish I’d had that thing today-makes squeezing so much easier…)  At this point, acording to the instructions, all I had left was to blind rivet the rear spar to the HS-708 main rib.  But there was still riveting left to do- the rear spar hadn’t been riveted to the HS-706 tip ribs.  Either I missed it in the instructions or it was left out…in any case, setting those four rivets was the last task to finish my stab!

Of course, this was where things went awry.  Since I had the squeezer out, I decided to squeeze these four rivets as well.  Yeah…squeezing -4 rivets is tough with full-strength hands, never mind hands that just got done squeezing probably 100+ -3 rivets.  The first two were passable, barely.  The last two were both totally jacked up.  To make matters worse, out of some sense of symmetry, I’d put the manufactured heads forward, where they were nearly impossible to access for drilling out.

After some head-scratching, I decided to get out my angle drill kit.  That let me get a decent shot at the heads, but it was impossible to tell if I was centered on the head.  I really didn’t want to foul up my holes on the home stretch…so I decided to drill out with a smaller (#40) bit to help avoid getting any of the rib/spar material.  This worked mostly like a charm-I didn’t damage any holes, though getting those rivets out was a bear.

Finally, I set those four rivets again, using the gun this time. Much better.  Then I sat back and realized that I had a completed horizontal stab sitting right in front of me.  Lots of false starts along the way, but I got past it all and finished a part!  Now on to the next part, and the next, and so on…there’s a lot left to build!

Squeezing rivets…over and over and over:

It’s DONE!

And now I have my first airplane part hanging from the ceiling:

Well, that hoped-for long evening in the garage didn’t really happen.  I was still able to get a bit done, but I was limited by my need for (and therefore availability of) a helping hand.

I started with riveting the HS-707 nose rib on the starboard side.  I wanted to try my alternate method of starting with the forwardmost rivet, but that didn’t work as well as I’d hoped.  Even clecoing only the hole just aft of that pesky bugger, the rib didn’t want to sit flush against the skin.  Oh well.  So i went back to what I did before and started at the back, working my way forward.  I made a brief try at shooting these rivets solo, which was a bad idea.  The angle meant that I’d have to shoot with my left hand and buck with my right.  First rivet went great, but I somehow set the second one with the shop head sticking a good bit out of the skin.  I suspect that I had a tendency to put too much pressure on the bucking bar and not enough on the rivet gun..so yeah, left-handed riveting is apparently not wise.  I got that SOB drilled out-thankfully without damaging the skin- and waited for help on the rest.  Once Josie was able to help, we got the rest of the nose rib rivets set.  It was again getting late by this time, so I decided to clean up, cleco the front spar in place, and leave the rest for tomorrow.  

We’re going to be out of town again this weekend, so I feel compelled to make the most of of the weekday nights.  I was a little bummed that I didn’t get more done tonight, but things are still coming together.  After a lot of head-banging, some ruined parts, and lots of steps forward and backward, I finally have something nearing a finished airplane part.

Josie grabbed a photo of me clecoing everything together so I could jump right back in tomorrow evening (I seem to be concentrating really hard!):

Went right back to work on the port stab today.  Over my lunch break, I made a run over to Harbor Freight Aviation Supply to see if they had a blind riveter with a smaller head.  Turns out they did.  Plus, the head also swivels, which might come in handy for some odd places in the future.  For $9, I think I can get my money’s worth out of the thing. 

Once I got home, a bit of experimenting confirmed that my new riveter would work just fine for the current task.  I recruited Josie to come hold the stab in a better working position, and the three blind rivets were set in no time.  Next step was to start riveting the HS-702 spar and HS-708 main rib.  This was by far the most flush rivets I’d set.  At first I had Josie helping me by bucking while I ran the gun, and we had a decent rhythm going.  But she wasn’t feeling totally great, and had even stayed home from work, so after about 30 minutes she (rather apologetically) went inside.  I found that the spar rivets weren’t too difficult to shoot solo, so I shot the rest of those myself.  I was able to get Josie back out to help with the rib rivets, which were a bit too awkward to comfortably shoot solo.

Out of all that, I only had one rivet that had to be drilled out; I apparently let the bucking bar slip and the shop head started to fold.  But I caught it early enough that it was easy to extract, and I didn’t damage my skin at all!

It was getting pretty late by this point, so as much as I would have loved to move right on to the starboard skin, it was quitting time.  I also would have merrily squeezed the rivets on the ends of the stab, but instructions have you leave these for last, once the rear spar is clecoed in place.  Not sure what the reason for this is, but I don’t have a good reason to depart from the instructions, so I won’t.

Tomorrow evening is free as well, and it’s a work-from-home day for me.  I’m hoping to get out in the garage early and get all these steps repeated on the starboard skin.  Once that’s done, I’ll pretty much be home-free on my first assembly!

Mostly-riveted port skin:

A nice little row of shop heads:

So here I am, freshly back from my first-ever (and certainly not last) trip up to Oshkosh, and it’s definitely time to get back to work.  A short confession before we get started here: some of the work described herein was done almost two weeks ago, but I didn’t do a post then mostly because I spent about 15 minutes in the garage and when I stopped, I was quite furious.

Anyways…when we left off before, all the h-stab skeleton prep was done and it was time to start skinning.  The first step in the instructions is to rivet the HS-707 nose rib to the top side of the skin.  That seemed straightforward at first: cleco in place, looks good, start riveting.  I started from the trailing edge end and moved forward, which in retrospect may have been a bad decision.  I had no problem keeping the skin pulled against the rib until I got to that last rivet on the leading edge.  Here, the skin is pulled into a more noticeable bend to sit against the rib, and without the cleco in place, the skin sat a good 1/2″ or so from the rib.  After some thinking, I clecoed the HS-708 rib to the HS-707 rib and clecoed both to the bottom side of the skin.  This pulled the skin tight against the rib, but also made for some tight quarters.  A little experimentation, and I had the bucking bar in place…I fired the rivet gun…crap, the shop head is clinching.  Drill-out time!

Ever mindful of the opportunity to damage my nice skin, I drilled carefully, popped the manufactured head off, and started trying to drive the shop head off.  Boy was it stubborn…and when I finally got it off, I realized my error of judgment.  With nothing to brace the rib flange, it had bent itself pretty severely.  Oh, and despite being careful, I’d enlarged the skin hole.  I expressed my frustration in some terms which shall not be repeated here, stomped out of the garage, and found something else to occupy me for the rest of the night.  That ended up being the last time I was in the garage pre-OSH as well, what with trip prep.

So tonight, I resolved to get past that pesky thing and move forward.  One important step here was to swallow my pride and get help.  I drove all the previous rivets solo, awkwardly holding the bucking bar and gun at arm’s length.  Which is kind of dumb when you have a lady around who’s expressed plenty of interest in helping.  So yeah, I took advantage of her services tonight.

After careful consideration, I decided that there still wasn’t any better way to pull the skin flush than to cleco the bottom side to the nose and main ribs, so I did that.  I then recruited my help to hold the bucking bar while I drove my first-ever “oops” rivet.  All in all, it was less stressful than I’d built it up to be.  Next, I clecoed the tip rib in place, and set about riveting the bottom side of the skin to HS-707.  Again, here having a helper was, well, helpful.  We got those rivet shot in no time.

Next step is to cleco the front spar in place and blind rivet HS-707 and -708 to the spar.  Seems easy, but oh wait…the only rivet puller I have is a cheapo unit from Lowes or something, and the head is huge.  No way to use it in the tight confines of the stab that I can see.  So I stopped for the night, and tomorrow I’ll see about finding a rivet puller that fits in tight spaces better.

(no pictures tonight, I’m afraid…)

Unfortunately, my cobuilder was a bit under the weather today, which put a bit of a damper on stuff I wanted to get done.  Still, I got all the remaining skeleton assembly and skin prep work done, so now it’s on to putting the skins on.

Skeleton work was pretty easy; the HS-810 and -814 reinforcements get riveted onto the HS-702 front spar channels, and then the HS-405 and -405 inner ribs are riveted onto the front spar.  This work went pretty quick.  I did foul up one rivet that I tried to squeeze, only to have it start to fold over, but I got it drilled out with no drama and just used the rivet gun on the rest.

After that, the skins still needed to be edge finished and dimpled.  Normally, I’d have a second pair of hands for this, but with them unavailable, I went at it alone.  That required a bit of creativity, but nothing too horrible.  I did, however, secure my place in the figure-eight club towards the end of the dimpling session.  I was nearly done when I whacked the C-frame and heard what I would describe as a nonstandard noise.  Yup, I made a new hole.

I went ahead and finished the other dimpling, then went back to deal with the figure-eight.  After a bit of research, I used the flush set in the rivet gun and the back rivet plate to flatten the partial dimple.  I then drilled it out, deburred the new hole, and then redimpled the original hole.  The results look satisfactory; I should be able to fill the accidental hole with some epoxy and then rivet the rest of the skin as normal.  Since the mistake is on the bottom of the skin, nobody should ever see it, especially once paint goes on.

Completed spars, temporarily stored on motorcycle “sawhorses”:

ARGH:

Late start in the shop tonight- Josie and I went out to dinner and didn’t get home until 7:30 or so.  Once we got home, I turned on the A/C in the garage, let things cool off for a bit, and then got right to work on the rear spar.  Nothing too fancy here-the two reinforcement pieces are clamped into the spar channels, and you rivet away.  The only caveats are to make sure you skip the holes for the ribs and elevator hinges.  As recommended in the instructions, I put some blue painter’s tape over those holes to keep myself honest.

Once the reinforcements and channels were attached, the next step was to rivet on the outer elevator hinge brackets.  Finally, it was time to bolt on the center hinge bearing, which was where the only oddness of the night came.  I dutifully dug out the proper bolts, nuts, and washers. (noting to myself along the way that it was time to buy another storage bin for these things)  I went to push the first bolt through the hinge bracket-and it wouldn’t fit in the hole.  Huh?

Well, there were basically two possibilities here: either the instructions called for the wrong hole size, or I misread them and drilled the wrong hole size.  I checked back and found that the holes should have been drilled to #12.  I then compared the bolts to my trusty drill bit gauge…yep, #12 is the perfect hole size.  I don’t know what I drilled those holes with, but it wasn’t a #12 bit.  Going through my bit collection, I found that I did indeed have a #12 bit…weird.

The only remaining issue was that these holes had been match-drilled with the bracket clecoed in place.  Well, with the large holes I had drilled now, there was no way to really clamp the thing in place and match-drill again.  So I just separately drilled the holes to #12, hoping that everything would line up…and it did.  On went the bolts, nuts, and washers, and the rear spar was officially done!

I really wanted to move on to the front spar, but it was getting late as usual, and I try to knock off the air tool usage after 10 or so, especially the rivet gun.  No worries though, the front spar is a lot simpler, far fewer rivets to take care of there.

The finished product from tonight: