Horizontal Stab start

I stretched out the rudder work because a big block of time was needed for the priming and trailing edge proseal steps.  So to fill it in I started on the HStab.  My dad stayed over after his birthday dinner and helped debur the rear spar.

The instructions have you prime the spar early on, so I did that along with the the rudder parts.  Then you assemble it with some brackets.

Then its time for some fabrication.  You take 2x2 1/8" angle aluminum stock and make it conform to some very specific dimensions, down to the 1/32".  These are the pieces that broke my first bandsaw blade.  I think they came out great though.

Belly-up Bandsaw

My bandsaw setup had been working pretty well.  My dad gave me a pretty old 3-wheel Delta that I remember when he got when I was in high school.  I got a good metal blade for it.  It was noisy as hell with that big blade but I cleaned the wheels after every use and seemed to be OK.

That was until the Horizonal Stabilizer attach brackets.  They are 2x2 1/8" angle aluminum.  Got halfway through the first one and the blade snapped in two.  And there were two spots with severe cracks that were ready to go at any minute.

I don't screw around with the wrong tools, its just not worth my time.  So made a trip to Northern Tool in Davenport IA while the kids took their nap and got this beast.



This sucker weighs 200 lbs, and chews thru metal like, well, an industrial bandsaw.  Had a helluva time putting the base on by myself.

Detour over.  Build on!

Rudder assembly

Once you get the rudder assembled then there's a whole bunch of match drilling.






Preparing the trailing edge is kind of tricky.  The problem is that you drill it perpendicular to the rudder chord line, but countersink it perpendicular to the rudder skin.  The pilot on the countersink bit wants to follow the hole.  I sweated this a lot until doing some research and finding out you can just hold it in your hand and countersink.  When you hold the wedge in your hand, the existing hole in the wedge will force the countersink bit at the wrong angle for a little bit, but then you can put a little force on the wedge and get the correct countersink angle to remove the rest of the material.  From what I read online, it doesn't have to be perfect.  I think mine came out pretty good, will see once its riveted together.
Oh - and one sneaky thing in the plans.  They call out a part number for the wedge that isn't in the inventory list.  The number you use is listed in the figure. Took me more time than I'll admit to figure that out.



Then you pull it all apart again and commence deburring.  There's probably 500 holes in this thing, and each gets deburred 4 times.





Finally primed the whole works.  I'm getting better at this, but it still takes a while.  The most time consuming part is scotchbrite scrubbing every part.  Results were better this time because I learned to blow-dry every piece before bringing it to the paint booth.





Then it all starts going back together. First is some spar reinforcements and nutplates.




Then back-riveting the stiffeners to the skins.  Back riveting is awesome, it leaves the manufactured head ultra-flush on the skin.




Getting that aft rivet set on the top rib is a little bit tricky.  Here's how I did it, worked great.  Found a air hammer chisel to stick in there, elevated the back end of it with a squeezer yoke I had laying around.  Then hold it steady and hit the chisel with the rivet gun.  Like butta.

Rudder Frame

Making progress on the rudder.

These stiffeners have to be cut out using the band saw then assembled.

Then you cleco them to the rudder spar:



Next goes on 1 skin and the trailing edge wedge.  You can see the wedge in here, at the trailing end of the skin with alternating small and big holes.  I had a freakout in that the plans called for that trailing edge to be part number R-1006, but I could not find that in my inventory sheet.  Finally figured out that lower in the diagram it gives you the real part number VA-140.  Normally the lower part of the spar would have a rib too, thats the one I'm still waiting on Vans for.