Empennage

Today I continued to work on the rudder assembly. I decided to go ahead and put a coat of primer on the stiffeners and while that was drying I used the DRDT-2 to dimple the rudder skins. The rudder skins are very thin and it didn't take much to create the proper dimple. In fact, I had to be extra careful not to put too much pressure on the handle while dimpling. I used the Back-Riveting technique to rivet the stiffeners to the skins. I put the rivets in place and then used a strip of rivet tape to hold them in place. Then I turned the skin over and placed the flush heads on a special plate of smooth steel. I used the special sliding sleeve rivet set in the gun to make the shop head. I turned the air pressure down to about 50 psi and then it only took about a second to set the AN426AD3-3 rivets to the right size. But I was real happy with the way the rivets turned out. Back-Riveting makes it easy to come out with a clean well set rivet. I still had some time to work in the shop so I continued to the next step, Building The Rudder Skeleton. I clecoed the Bottom Rib (R-904) to the Spar (R-902). Then I enlarged the 0.125 hole in the center of the forward flange of the R-904 to 3/8 with the UniBit by using the hole in R-902 as a guide.

4 Hours

Total hours on project = 84