Sep 26 -- Rudder Horn

Not much building at the moment, because the day job is all consuming. Did get the rudder horn attached after both priming and a final coat of paint.

I was able to set solid rivets by using the longeron yoke in the rivet squeezer. Probably could of turned the bottom rivets around so that the shop head was inside the rudder horn; however this direction made both control and inspection much easier.

Time: 0.5 Hrs

Sep 6 -- More Countersinking and Priming

Not a whole lot to report for Labor Day: primed parts, a tad of riveting (doublers) and finished countersinking the trailing edge insert. Mostly a weekend with Patrick, as he starts his visit from Africa.

Time: 2 Hours

Sep 5 -- Dimple, Prime, Countersink Rudder

The past couple of days represented quite a bit of progress on the rudder, but without major visible results simply because this assembly involves so much effort. I dimpled everything that requires dimpling (hopefully), and then primed a few parts. Need to go back to NAPA for another can of primer, though -- and am also considering whether I should powder coat the rudder horn and rudder horn brace. (More correctly, whether I should farm them out to a shop -- Harbor Freight powdercoat sucks.)

Finally, I clamped a piece of wood to the bench and match drilled it with the trailing edge angle aluminum. Then I started countersinking 3/32" holes in it -- in anticipation of riveting the rudder's trailing edge. The Net is full of various opinions about this particular issue, and I see that others are particularly concerned with making certain that the edge is straight and true. You'll be reading more about this as I continue.

All of the workshop time today was without the neck brace. Karin says that I seem to be hunching forward though, so it's back on again as I post this entry.

Time: 5 hours

Sep 1 -- More Rudder Construction

It's been three weeks since a blog post, with lots of non-building stuff in the middle (surgery, Patrick was ambushed in Namibia, Anna was not having the best of luck in Bolivia, I refinished the deck, etc...)

Nonetheless, I actually worked on the rudder! That includes the day I went in for surgery, the day after I came home, and a lot of other days. Think that the hours worked were much longer than stated below; however I lost track and never got around to blogging. Wearing a neck brace is a pain.

As usual, lots of plastic peeling involved...

I will let the photos speak for themselves. You can see where I had one issue with holes drilled too close to the edge of a trim strip. What you can't see is that I bought another part and promptly repeated the mistake.

Next up is deburring, dimpling, priming, and riveting the silly thing.

Time since last blog post: 8 hours