Sunday September 10, 2006
HS Prep, VS Assembly
(6.0 Hours Horizontal Stabilizer, 0.5 Hours Vertical Stabilizer)
6.5 Hours Total

Friday, I finished deburring all of the holes in the HS, then I dimpled the spars and ribs. Emily came out and helped hold the skins out while I dimpled them with the C-frame. Some of the holes closest to the leading edge were difficult to dimple straight. The pneumatic squeezer is great for dimpling when you can use it. I can't imagine doing the work by hand.

Yesterday I started edge prepping the spars. My strategy is to run down the edges with the Scotchbrite wheel in the die grinder to smooth sheer marks. I finish with several passes of Emery cloth. I finished the spars this morning and then completed the skins.

I'm planning to prime the spars, ribs, and stiffeners very soon.

Later tonight, I pulled out the VS parts and started assembling them. I clecoed the rear spar doubler (which, by the way, is really thick) to the rear spar, clecoed on the 6 hinge brackets, and back-drilled/match-drilled the 6 holes in the upper of the two lower brackets. The next step is to prepare the 4 ribs (edges, fluting, and straightening) and cleco them into the assembly.

The VS feels "fun" now that I've done a lot of work on the HS. It's simpler, for one thing, and I've already done a lot of this stuff so it's less stressful.

Note: Emily's off on a school trip with the digital camera, so I won't have pictures for the next week or so.

This work is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International