Step 1 calls for measuring &
cutting the VS-1014 Rear Spar Caps. Sort of unnerving that the
first step in your expensive kit is to cut it! Then reality sets
in... if I screw this up, this angle can't be that expensive... just do
it! Besides, we're going to need to get used to this! After
the cuts, its over to the bench sander to knock off the sharp edges,
and then to the Scotch-Brite wheel to smooth it up.
The deburred VS-1008 Rear Spar Doubler
After deburring the Rear Spar
Doubler, we got to cleco again. This time it was the whole Rear
Spar assembly including the Hinge Doubler called out in Van's Service
Bulletin SB 06-2-3 (VS-1003, VS-1008, VS-1014-L & R, VS-1010,
VS-1011, VS-1012, and VS-1017)
We then used a #30 drill and final-drilled all the 1/8" holes in the VS-1008 Rear Spar Doubler, the Rear Spar Caps, and also the holes in the Rudder Hinge Brackets and the new holes in the VS-1017 Hinge Doubler. Step 5 had us using a 3/16" drill to match-drill the upper attach bolt holes into the Rear Spar Caps.
Ahhh, a new toy to play with... Step 6 has us countersinking all of the #30 holes below the upper attach bolt holes. Since the microstop is new, it took some time getting it setup for just the right depth. Once done, the countersinking went pretty quick. Alright! done with page 1... Progress!!
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We then used a #30 drill and final-drilled all the 1/8" holes in the VS-1008 Rear Spar Doubler, the Rear Spar Caps, and also the holes in the Rudder Hinge Brackets and the new holes in the VS-1017 Hinge Doubler. Step 5 had us using a 3/16" drill to match-drill the upper attach bolt holes into the Rear Spar Caps.
Ahhh, a new toy to play with... Step 6 has us countersinking all of the #30 holes below the upper attach bolt holes. Since the microstop is new, it took some time getting it setup for just the right depth. Once done, the countersinking went pretty quick. Alright! done with page 1... Progress!!
And here it is, clamped to the table and ready for final drilling of the common holes.
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After final drilling it was time to attach the skin in order to final drill it. As we had heard, clecoing the skin to the VS-1013 Nose Rib was an absolute PAIN! Even though we deburred the Nose Rib it still left some significant scratches on the interior of the skin while trying to muscle it into place. It worries me to think how it'll be after we get a coat of primer on both of those pieces. Doesn't sound like fun!
Here's a shot of the telltale bump
in the skin I've heard so much about. I think we're definitely
going to have to sand that nose rib down a bit!
Here we can see Angela just having a blast with Clecos!
We've also heard that this is one
of the first real feelings of satisfaction when building an RV...
having the first resemblance of an airplane part. We'd have to
agree!
Here's a shot of the inside of the
vertical stabilizer skin where the bump was. I draped the skin
over the edge of my table and lighlty tapped the bump a few times to
flatten it out some. The results were not perfect, but definitely
acceptable. I then used a Scotch-Brite pad to sand out the
scratches left by the rib. All that's remaining are superficial
scratches that will come out when I give the skin a final scuffing
prior to priming.
Section 6-3, Step 4 calls for
final drilling most of the holes in the skin... that's a lot of
holes! (I bet the wings are gonna be fun!!) Once I get all
the holes drilled out, I think that'll be it for the night.
and debur... and debur... wait a
minute... what was it I was looking forward to again??? Ahh
yes... the sooner I get done with this, the sooner I'll be priming and
riveting this weekend!!
Here you can see the the
countersunk holes in the VS-1003 Rear Spar. The marked hole is
where the lower row of rivets will go that attach the Vertical
Stabilizer skin. Everything below that will be covered up by the
fuselage tail skins.
Remembering that Angela was
working on the rudder I thought I would go ahead and separate the
R-1007 Rudder Stop parts as called out in 6-4 step 3. She'll need
the R-1007A's, and I'll need the R-1007B's (shown here). This
shot, as you can probably tell, is a before and after look. The
stamping process produces some fairly sharp edges. A quick trip
to the scotchbrite wheel and the edges are just as soft as they could
be.
Here is the doubler as I'm
countersinking the 4 bottom holes to accept the dimples I'll eventually
be putting in the corresponding holes in the front spar (6-4 step 2)
And here I am doing the most time
consuming process of the whole day... deburring! I basically went
over every single piece of the vertical stabilizer and made sure they
were completely deburred. I was amazed at how much I had missed
up until this point. I tried a couple of different techniques,
mainly to see which worked best, but also to break up the monotony of
the task (I can here some of the guys out there snickering and mumbling
under their breaths 'just wait till the wings'). Well, I finished
the day right as Angela arived home... perfect timing! Oh yeah, I
just remembered one more thing... I still have one more thing to do
before priming... we plan to eventually mount a camera atop the
vertical stabilizer. In order to do that we're putting in some
conduit that will reach up to the fiberglass tip. We'll need to
cut a hole for the conduit in the VS-1006 Top Rib (the conduit will be
routed through existing holes in the VS-1005 & VS-1013 Nose
Ribs). So, looks like that'll be what I'm doing next time.
THEN I'll get started on the priming!
Here is the finished product, along with the conduit installed for a test fit. Originally I planned the hole a bit further back, but then noticed it was directly between the cutouts in the flanges. These ribs are already pretty flimsy between these cutouts so I felt moving the hole forward between the flanges would provide a little more support.
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My original plan was to scuff all
parts prior to any finishing, although now involved with the process I
was kind of curious if scuffing the aluminum prior to Alumiprep would
make much of a difference. So, I scuffed some, but not the
others. This was my first attempt at the whole Alumiprep/Alodine
process... not too bad I think... a little boring though.
Next came the dimpling of the
skin. This was my first experience with the DRDT-2 on a skin...
actually, my first experience dimpling a skin, period! I liked
the idea I had seen on some other sites about laying the skins on some
foam to protect it while dimpling so I set up my tables to accomodate
this (sorry, I was in a hurry tonight so no pictures). The foam
did a wonderful job, as I expected, of protecting the skin from
scratches. However, one thing that surprised me was that the foam
caught the edges of the blue nylon film where I had cut the strips out
for the rivets (I was dimpling with the male die on the bottom so this
put the nylon on the foam... don't ask... I was experimenting...)
Anyway, I didn't realize it at the time, but here are the results...
... nothing major, just thought I'd mention it for consideration.
Another learning experience... Well, we're off to Sun-N-Fun this
weekend, so no building. It's our first trip there so we're
pretty excited!! I'm especially excited about checking out the
glass-panel vendors, as one of them will definitely be going in our
bird!! Plus, we're going to try like crazy to get a demo ride in
the factory RV-10. We'll post some pics when we get back too!
Ok, back from the chapter
meeting... some good info on fiberglass work, and met a lot of new
people (only our second time there). I also took one of our parts
affected by the screen door fiasco with us and showed it to our tech
advisor... he seemed to think it was fine, especially since we still
plan on priming it. That's my plan for the rest of the day, to
get all this stuff primed! First, I needed a nap... we didn't get
much sleep last night... I guess I needed it more than I thought
because 2+ hours later, I still wasn't ready to get up, but I
reluctantly did. Anyway... I roll out into the garage, and start
getting things set up for priming...
I haven't ever used a spray gun
before, so that took a little getting used to! I think I still
need some work though... a bunch actually!! Man... this was a
frustrating week for me... it was a learning week... a lot of time
spent on stuff that didn't seem to produce a lot! And the stuff
we did do, didn't seem to come out to our expectations. I primed
tonight for the very first time... it left a lot to be desired. I
planned to get it all done tonight, but that didn't happen. It
was windy, so I wasn't able to open the garage door for fear of stuff
blowing all over the place (yes, it's that windy outside). I
usually open the door about 6 or 8 inches in these cases, and even then
you can feel a breeze inside the garage. That being the case I
decided we were good to go for priming so I went at it. After the
first round I sprayed some thinner through the gun to clean it out... I
don't know if anybody reading this has used the AKZO recommended TR-19
thinner before, but let me tell you that stuff is POTENT! I
didn't realize it at the time (my filter mask eveidently works
exceptionally well!) but the fumes from this stuff were
phenominal! I came in the house, took off my mask, and inside of
30 seconds, Angela was remarking about the fumes... from the other side
of the house! Lesson learned... All priming will be done outside,
or at the very least with the garage door completely opened!
We're letting the garage air out now, and will continue the priming
later! Another lesson learned/decision made... our original
priming strategy was to Alodine & prime all non-Alclad parts, and
only prime the Alclad stuff. We completely forgot that most of
the spars and ribs are made out of Alclad sheet
(DOH!) If we'd realized this, we'd have saved
ourselves a lot of time this week by not having to Alodine 90% of what
we did... oh well... frustrating. Good thing is I've learned a
lot this week... a lot!
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Ah-Ha! I figured it out... the AKZO primer directions indicate there is a 30-minute "induction time". I have heard this implies mixing the 2 parts and then waiting 30-minutes before using it. Last night I did not do this. Tonight, after returning from Easter with the family, I decided to finish up the priming. This time I did let the mixture sit 30-minutes prior to using, and the results were immediately noticeable! This looks more like it!
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So, cool! Now we're ready to get on with some actual assembly... things are going to be exciting next time :-)
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(6-4 step 6): Ok, so I was busted! She got home right as I started. Well, I couldn't have all the fun. Besides, she was happy to just be able to walk up (still in cleats!) and squeeze a few rivets... no setup, no fuss!
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So, will I mow tomorrow night... probably not ;-)
The rudder hinge brackets attached with 4 rivets each. The two that
fit closest to the bend in the bracket proved to be a little too close
for the diameter of the dies we have for our squeezer. So, what's a
guy to do... bust out the rivet gun & bucking bar for the first
time! Btw: what's wrong with this picture?? The experienced ones in
the bunch are probably already snickering...
Well, when you precariously suspend a part between two tables with no
clamps or any other method of holding it still, unless you're lucky (as
I guess I was on the other 10 rivets) this is the result! On my second
to last rivet, as soon as I pulled the trigger the gun bounced across
the part (DOH!)... live and learn (again...)
Here's the completed rear spar assembly. One thing of note: I stepped
up a rivet length on the rudder hinge brackets. The longer ones were a
little long, but by the same amount the shorter ones were short (make
sense?)... so posed with the option of a little short, or a little
long, I chose a little long. Also, the previous picture shows the
hinge doubler called for in SB 06-2-3.
4/19 UPDATE: After browsing a few
of the other builder's sites I realized something... Other than the
flush mounted rivets, there is no specific indication in the plans of
which direction the rivet head should face on the rear spar assembly.
This means I should've thought about it first before just simply
inserting the universal head rivets the same direction as the flush
ones. Had I done that, I would've realized that the side I have the
shop head on is the exposed side (open to the rudder) and simply
turning them around would've put the shop head inside the vertical
stabilizer skin never to be seen. Plus, I wouldn't of had to use the
rivet gun. Bet I remember to think about it in the future! I guess if
it was going to happen sometime, this was probably one of the best
assemblies it could've happened on.
Once we were done for the day, I went back out to take a couple of
shots. Here's a shot of the vertical stabilzer with the conduit set in
it's final position. In a day or so when the tape is removed this
stuff won't be going anywhere!
(6-6 step 2): Riveting the skin on the vertical stabilizer is a puzzle. You have to rivet the first few sections of rivets in a specific order or else you wont be able to gain access to other rivets... seriously! So the first step was to remove the bottom nose rib. This allowed us access to the middle nose rib. Its interesting... the middle nose rib turned out to be the toughest part of this thing to rivet, but if you build this thing according to plans, its the very first thing you rivet! Kind of intimidating!! Anyway, Once the nose middle nose rib was done, I noticed I marred the thing up in a few places so I used our powder-coat touch up paint to cover the scratches I left in the primer. The touch up paint was quicker than mixing up some of the primer.
(6-6 step 3):
After the middle nose rib came the top rib, but only the portion
forward of the front spar. Angela wanted a piece of the action
too so I let her do this one. She then threatened me with the
squeezer so I let her do the bottom nose rib too ;-)
(6-6 step 5):
After all the nose ribs were in place, next came the entire front
spar. Relative to the rest of the airplane this isn't that many
rivets, but it sure seemed like a lot at the time! All of these
were done with the rivet gun and bucking bar. Here I've got the
rivet gun on the outside, and my left arm is inside the vertical
stabilizer where I'm holding a bucking bar on the underside of the
rivet. The rivet gun basically pounds the outside of the rivet
while the bucking bar bounces off the backside of it. These two
forces basically work against each other to compress the rivet clamping
everything (the skin and spar) in between the two ends. These
rivets are tiny, tiny, but strong... and there are a ton of them!
(6-6 step 6): Once the
front spar was completed on both sides, then came the middle rib behind
the front spar, and then the remainder of the top rib. The middle
one had to be done with the rivet gun, but the top one could be done
with the squeezer. Until I get a little more skilled with the
rivet gun the squeezer is my tool of choice! This is a shot of
the middle inspar rib from inside the vertical stabilizer.
(6-6 step 7): Now
the the middle inspar rib is complete, all the ramaining rivets can be
done with the squeezer (yeehaw!) Next step was to put the bottom
rib back in place and rivet it in. Once that was done the final
skin attachment was to the rear spar. After the skin was
completely attached there were about 30 more rivets that attached the
flanges of the rear spar caps to the flanges of the rear spar.
After those we could stick a fork in it... it was done!!! Here
I'm using the squeezer to set the 1/8" rivets attaching the bottom
inspar rib to the rear spar.
And... drum roll please... here
they are... Our completed vertical stabilizer and rudder! Some
day these babies will be controlling the yaw in our very own
airplane!! Ahhh we can dream can't we... Is it too early to
make airplane noises yet ;-)
