Tuesday August 29, 2006
HS Rear Spar Stiffeners (Horizontal Stabilizer)
3.0 Hours

Tonight, I started on the empennage project by working on the horizontal stabilizer rear spar stiffeners. The plans call for you to "break" the edges of the stiffeners, round the ends (which come square), and then ensure a tight fit inside of the actual spars. I spent a good 3 hours with this.

I started by running each edge of both of the stiffeners through the Scotchbrite wheel on my bench grinder. That seemed to a decent job of breaking the edges without leaving too many milling marks. I then took the Vixen file to the ends and did an approximate job of rounding them off to an even radius. Next, I smoothed off the filing and grinder marks with Emery cloth. Finally, I ran the Scotchbrite hand pads over the edges to get that satin finish. The end result turned out pretty well I think. The edges all have a nice smooth radius.

I have a feeling that I spent more time on them than was strictly necessary, but I figure that it doesn't hurt to do the thing right. I'm happy with the way they turned out.

I clecoed the stiffeners into the spars, but it was 11:30pm by this time and I didn't want to fire up the air compressor to do the drilling, so I wrapped up for the evening. It's a great feeling to be officially started!

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