| (9-2 step 2):
I started off the morning finishing up deburring the elevator
parts. Angela did a good portion of the ribs already, so on those
I just went back and touched up a few of the inside bends. I'm a
little anal about those ;-)
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(9-4 step 1): Angela
came out to get some hands off before heading in for a brief day at
work. After we removed the protective vinyl from the insides of
all the skins (much quicker as a two person job) she clecoed and final
drilled the hinge reinforcement plates to the front spars. After
that she opened up the trim cable routing holes in the spars as you can
see here. Then she was off...
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(9-3 step 3):
While Angela was working on the front spars I started working on
bending the close out tabs on the skins. Per the plans I marked
the bend line and then clamped the skin to my work table so that the
bend line was right at the edge of the table. The edge of our
table was pretty sharp and due to bend radius concerns in the thin
aluminum skin I decided to round it off slightly with a file first.
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With
the skin clamped in place I took a 2x4 and held it as tightly against
the skin as possible as I gentlystarted rotating it down to form the
bend. The natural tendency of the metal skin is to bend more at
the end where there's more metal because you have a longer lever-arm
sticking out there. So, you have to be mindful of making sure the
shorter end is being bent down as well. I would bend it a little,
check it, and then bend a little more. Eventually you get it down
to about 70 degrees or so. The plans then call for using a flush
rivet set and the rivet gun to bend the remainder, but I simply took a
hammer and tapped against the 2x4 instead. This proved very easy
and acceptable. Once done, I unclamped the skin, flipped it over,
and tweaked the tab into its final 90 degree position with my hand
seamer. Not too bad, eh...
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(9-5 step 3): Once
the closeout tabs were bent it was time to start clecoing some things
together! First thing was to cleco the front spars to the lower
skins. After that all the ribs and the two root ribs went in
followed by the rear spar. Once everything was clecoed together
all the ribs and spars were final drilled to each other (final drilling
the skins will come later). After drilling, 2 of the shear clips
were clecoed to the ribs and rear spars in the same location as the
bent close out tabs. These shear clips will eventually get final
drilled to the close out tabs.
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(9-6 step 1): The
next step was to cleco in the trim access reinforcement plates for
final drilling. These plates have two flanges on them.
After locating them I noticed one of the flanges on the left one
(E-615) appeard to have been hit with the bend break at the factory in
the wrong location, bent back flat, and then bent correctly. This
left sort of a joggle in the web along the rivet hole line. It
wasn't severe, but noticeable. I took a hammer and tapped it a
little more flat. It's still noticeable though. Anyway,
after deburring these, I clecoed them in place and final drilled all
the holes common with the skin, and also the nut plate rivet attachment
holes (the nut plates will accept the screw used to attach the cover
plate)
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(9-6 step 4): After
the reinforcement plates came the elevator gussets. These are
basically reinforcement pieces that fit in the corner of the rear spar
and the root rib. After deburring these and using a soft mallet
to bang them to the correct angle, they got clecoed in. The
original holes took 3/32" clecoes, but the plans call for final
drilling them #30. I had to read that twice just to make
sure. I think its because there are multiple pieces joining here
and the metal is pretty thick. The holes don't line up exactly
and since these pieces don't 'give' as much as most do, the final
location of the holes can vary more than usual. So drilling out
more gives you more latitude in all directions for a perfect fit.
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(9-6 step 6): Next
we got to attach and final drill the tip rib assembly that was set
aside a little while ago. This proved a little
interesting… The last rivet hole in the upper and lower front
spar flanges get quite a stackup of material: the spar flange,
the counterbalance skin, the inboard tip rib, and the elevator
skin. Figuring out the order of these took a bit as the plans
weren't very helpful in this area... that is until I discovered page 1
of section 9 (thanks Angela!). I looked ahead in the plans, but
didn't think about going back to the beginning. Anyway, you can
see in the closeup below exactly what I'm talking about. The
order of the stackup is (from inside --> out): inboard tip
rib, front spar flange, counterbalance skin, elevator skin.
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(9-6 step 7): And
finally it was time to close the elevators up by clecoing on the top
skin! We'll call it a night here… besides, I'm
hungry!! Say cheese :-)
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