Short night in the garage today.  I decided to wait on attaching the skin and just finish up the skeleton tonight.  Finishing up the rear spar was a snap; all I had left to do was to rivet the VS-411 and VS-412 hinge brackets.  Those were a piece of cake, and went pretty quick.  Before proceeding, I went back over the plans and instructions and realized that completing the stab was going to be a little different than I thought.  I’d been expecting to rivet together the whole skeleton, both spars and all the ribs, and then attach the skin.  Turns out the actual procedure is to rivet the ribs to the front spar, then rivet the skin to that skeleton, and finally rivet the rear spar in place last to complete the assembly.  And that, my friends, is why we read and reread the instructions before doing anything.

Anyway, back to work…everything was going great.  Upper rib to front spar, piece of cake.  Middle rib to front spar, also piece of cake.  The bottom was a different story.  Here there are two ribs to attach to the spar, which really limits access on both sides of the rivets.  Plus there are three rivets; the outer two are easy to get to with the hand squeezer, but the center one is inaccessible.  To make things worse, the ribs meet that spar at a slight angle, so one side is really tight.  After staring and rubbing my chin for a while, I decided to give it a whirl with the offset set I have for the rivet gun and one of the more odd-shaped of my bucking bars.  Better yet, in order to get in a position to both rivet and hold the bucking bar, I had to switch hands, with the rivet gun in my left hand.  I practiced a few times just getting everything in position, until I was confident I could do this.  A few quick hits on the rivet gun, stop to recheck everything, double-check the bucking bar positioning, everything still looks OK.  So I gave a good blast with the rivet gun again, then stopped to check again…crap.  The shop head of the rivet isn’t square, it’s starting to drift a bit.  There won’t be any saving that, that’s for sure.

I elected to stop for the evening at that point.  I’m going to have to figure out a way to drill out that rivet without ruining anything, and it’s going to be fun considering the confined that contributed to it being a bad rivet in the first place.  In the meantime, it’s time for some research into how other builders have done this.  A better squeezer, one that uses swappable yokes, would be helpful here; my squeezer has a pretty shallow throat, which limits its usefulness.  A 3″ yoke would have made this a breeze, and the rivet gun never would have entered the picture.

Oh, and I forgot to order the replacement parts for the h-stab.

Yesterday, I said I hoped to get the v-stab skeleton done today.  I did not achieve that goal, though I got pretty close.  Still, I put in a solid day’s work on the project, and got my hands dirty with a lot of skills that I’ll use throughout the build.

I left off yesterday with the skeleton clecoed and match-drilled, and the v-stab skin clecoed in place but not match-drilled.  So step one today was to match-drill the skin.  Nothing fancy there, just a lot of drilling interspersed with a lot of cleco moving.  Then it was time to tear the entire stab apart and get going on prep work.  First on the docket after disassembly was deburring and edge finishing.  I elected to set the skin aside and focus on the skeleton, since that would be the first thing I’d assemble.  This was probably a good decision, because just cleaning up the skeleton took far longer than I ever would have guessed.  I spent a solid 2+ hours just on that.  Most of it went quickly; long straight edges were a piece of cake on the scotchbrite wheel.  It took a little more experimentation to clean up the tighter places, like the relief cuts in the rib flanges and such.  Some creative use of files and scotchbrite pads took care of that.  Another time sink here was the VS-808 spar doubler.  The edges of this thick piece had very deep tool marks, which I felt compelled to smooth down.

Next up was dimpling and countersinking.  This went fairly quickly, and then it was time for primer.  I moved out into the driveway (and, by proxy, the Georgia heat) and got to work.  I’m keeping things simple with priming; prep is limited to applying Simple Green to clean up and scrubbing with scotchbrite pads to rough the surface.  While Simple Green is a good degreaser, it’s important to remember that it’s a surfactant; a good thorough rinse is essential to leave no traces.  Once the pieces had dried, it was on to my high-tech plywood + saw horse priming station, where I applied a nice coat of Dupli-Color self etch.  That went well, except for when the sky got a little dark and I felt a raindrop or two, which prompted a rapid relocation of my still-wet spar channels.

While waiting for the primer to finish drying, I went back to work on the v-stab skin.  Off came the protective vinyl, and into action sprang the hole deburr tool.  Deburring those holes in the skin is interesting-kind of a challenge to effectively brace the skin while you spin the tool.  And some stuff is in a bad place to do with my right hand, so it became a difficult choice between awkwardly using my right hand or awkwardly using my left hand.  Edges of the skin weren’t too bad, though there were some high tool marks.  I decided to forego the scotchbrite wheel and work only with files and the edge deburr tool I have.  That worked out pretty well, though when I go out tomorrow I may find that I’m less than satisfied.  I may end up using the wheel after all.

Finally, it was back in the garage and time to start assembly.  First step is to assemble the rear spar parts: the VS-803 spar channel, VS-808 doubler, and VS-410/411/412 rudder hinge brackets.  There’s some pretty thick material here, and as such the rivets are looong, -6 or -7 all the way up through the doubler.  Turns out those aren’t much fun to squeeze either.  The first few weren’t bad.  By the time I’d done ten or so, my hands hurt, and I was having to get my right thigh involved to get enough force to get that last bit of squeeze. (I’m sure this would have been fun to watch)  Squeezing took longer than expected as well, mostly due to me taking frequent breaks to let my girly arms recover.  By the time I got all the doubler rivets in place, I was starting to get sloppy (and hungry), so I called it a night.  I still have to go back and rivet the VS-411/412 hinge brackets tomorrow, then the rear spar will be done.  After that, riveting the rest of the skeleton should be pretty straightforward. I might even have time to start riveting the skin on.

Yay pictures!

Yup, I ruined parts today.  The three or four people actually reading this might recall that in our last installment, my next task was to taper and round the ends of the HS-410 and HS-414 forward spar reinforcements.  That didn’t end so well, but it was a bit of a learning experience.

On Friday, I picked up a shiny new belt sander on the way home from work.  Today, I got to try it out.  Perhaps my expectations were too high, but I was none to impressed with how slowly it was removing material from the reinforcements.  It also heated the pieces up pretty quickly as well.  So I decided to find another approach, but this is where I went astray.  Rather than sitting back, thinking things through, and coming up with a thorough Plan B, I started focusing instead on how I really wanted to get these pieces done today.  Bad idea.  My off-the-cuff Plan B was to rough cut the tapers with a hacksaw and then finish with the belt sander and Scotchbrite wheel.  Problem was, I didn’t have a hacksaw, so I’d have to run out and pick one up.  Then I remembered that I had a Dremel and a load of cutoff wheels.  I tried using that to rough cut, but it was quickly apparent that I couldn’t control the wheel to my liking.

30 minutes later, I was back in the garage with a shiny new hacksaw.  I set upon the reinforcement angles with renewed vigor; it wasn’t much fun, but I finally got the rough cuts done.  Then, I wanted to straighten out the tapers, so I went to work on the belt sander.  Then I had to smooth all those rough edges.  Unfortunately-and I was gradually realizing this as I went along, but too late to do anything about it- by the time I did all that, I’d removed too much material.  The plans call for a 1/4″ radius on the ends, and I ended up down to 3/16″ in a few places.  I should have made my rough cuts a lot further out, then given myself more room to ease material off until I hit the edges I wanted.  I’ll keep that in mind when I redo these…Tuesday I’ll be calling Van’s for my first (and probably not last) replacement parts.

After taking a break and thinking things through, I decided to stop work on the horizontal stab for the time being.  The front spar was the next major subassembly, and while I could have skipped ahead to working with the ribs and such, setting it aside to move on to a different component seemed like a better idea.  Plus the vertical stab looks a lot simpler than the horizontal…in fact, it’s strange to me that Van’s has you start on the more complex h-stab.

So anyway, that’s what I did…and I made good progress.  By the end of the night, I had the entire v-stab structure clecoed together and match-drilled.  Next step was to cleco the skin on and match-drill that.  It was getting a bit late and I didn’t expect to do the match-drilling, but I couldn’t turn down the opportunity to temporarily attach the skin and look gleefully at something that looked very much like an airplane part.  So I did.

Tomorrow’s Memorial Day, which means I have the day off, so I’ll be back to work bright and early.  Hoping to at least get everything in the v-stab prepped and primed, and maybe even get the skeleton riveted together.  Not sure I’ll make it as far as riveting the skins, but we’ll see.

Another short session tonight.  I seem to keep finding things I need before I can do certain steps.  Last time, I stopped when I got to a step requiring a drill bit size I wasn’t sure I had.  A large portion of my tool set was bought secondhand as a unit, and it included a lot of assorted drill bits.  I’m pretty sure there’s probably a #21 in there, along with the other sizes I need, but I’m not sure what sizes I have.  I needed to order some stuff from Spruce anyway, so I tacked on a drill bit size gauge.  I could work out the bit sizes, since I have a set of analog calipers, but I’m not sure I trust myself there.  I’d rather wait and make really sure I’m right before possibly ruining parts…

Anyway, my order from Spruce didn’t come today, so I decided to skip ahead a bit.  Next step was to attach and match-drill the outboard elevator hinge points. (HS-412PP and HS-413PP)  These were pretty straightforward, though the inboard pieces were a little trickier since each hinge half has only two rivet holes.  Normally you cleco half the holes between two pieces to hold them together while match-drilling the other holes, then switch and repeat.  But with only two holes, only one can be clecoed while drilling, which doesn’t exactly lend itself to stability.  So I clecoed both holes, added a clamp, then individually removed the clecos and match-drilled.

Next up was the center hinge point, HS-411PP, and the VA-146 bearing.  Only one of the HS-411 halves is pre-drilled, so the halves have to be clamped together over the VA-146, then clecoed to the spar assembly, and then all three pieces are drilled through.  I fussed over this probably more than I needed to, but I was acutely aware that this was a good opportunity to ruin my first part.  But all turned out well; once drilling was done, I deburred everything, cleaned up, and riveted the assembly together.  First rivets on the project are done!

Next, I moved on the front spar.  I got as far as clecoing the inboard holes for the HS-410 and HS-414 reinforcements, but the next step involved tapering the ends of the reinforcements…oh, guess what, I don’t really have anything good to do that.  I went ahead and laid out the taper patterns, but decided to wait until I had picked up a belt sander to do the tapering.  I could have possibly skipped forward to other steps, but I’m getting a bit uncomfortable with having several items I need to go back and address, so I elected to wait.  I’m going to grab the sander on the way home from work tomorrow, and my Spruce order should come in as well, so I’ll be able to go back and finish the drilling jobs I skipped.  Assuming, that is, I have the necessary bits…

Started building in earnest tonight.  Nothing really complex happened, unless you count me very gingerly working with my pricey aluminum bits.  I cleaned up the HS-609PP rear spar doubler, rounded the edges, and then clecoed and match-drilled it to the HS-603PP spar channels.  

I took care of a few firsts tonight as well.  First, I added my first bits of blood to the project. (adding my DNA just makes it that much more personalized, right?)  I still don’t know how I busted my knuckle.  I was match-drilling and wondering what these strange red flecks on the spar channel were when I noticed the knuckle.  Oh, that’s my blood.  That was after I got careless with the reamer and spun it across my formerly peerless aluminum, leaving a nice scratch in its wake.  I’ll have to make sure I clean that up thoroughly before priming later on…

Sorry, only one photo tonight.  I’m going to have to make a concerted effort to take photos as I go; It end to get involved in stuff I’m working on, to the point that stopping and taking pictures is the last thing on my mind.

I’ll start with a straightforward confession: I was pretty much 100% unproductive at work today.  You see, ever since I got the tracking info for my empennage kit, I’d been refreshing that page in a seriously obsessive manner.  As of about 8:30 this morning, the kit was at my local Fedex location…but too late for it to go on a truck today.  No way was I going to just sit back and let it sit all weekend in a warehouse, mere miles from my home.  So I called and was able to arrange to pick the kit up myself after work.  By 7:00, I had two boxes with the lovely label “HIGH DOLLAR AIRCRAFT PARTS” sitting in my garage.  Thirty minutes later, after scarfing dinner at light speed, I was tearing the boxes open and trying not to squeal like a little schoolgirl.  I then spent the next 90 minutes on inventory.  Good news: it’s all there!
Unfortunately, I have plans for the rest of tonight, as well as all day tomorrow, so Sunday looks like the next viable work day.  I still have a practice kit lying around that needs to be built as well, so I suspect that’ll be Sunday’s task.  I’ve also taken a pass for now on figuring out storage for all these parts…so I’ve got some housekeeping items to take care of before I launch into this project.  The good news is that Memorial Day is coming up, which means a long weekend for building.
Let the fun begin!