More on the Rudder

I final-drilled all of the rudder and disassembled it per the plans. Unfortunately, there were a couple of places where the clecoes must have been rubbing against something while we moved, and that left some small deformations around those particular holes. It’s nothing major, just an annoyance. I’m building an airplane and every rivet doesn’t need to be perfect.

I used the edge roller from Avery Tools to put a slight inward bend on the trailing edges of both rudder skins. This will help the skins to sit down tight when the trailing edge is riveted.

Another few hours of deburring, cleaning and priming and it should be time to rivet the rudder together. Then I will get a chance to try out my new back-rivet plate (a 4-foot piece of cold-rolled steel I picked up from a local steel supplier).

It’s not spectacular, but you can see the photo below of the workshop.  I took the picture with my iPhone using “Pano”, and app that takes multiple pictures and merges them together to form a panoramic photo.  The ceiling looks like it’s bent, but that’s just an illusion from the merging of the photos.  As you can see, the shop is cozy, but it works!