Progress has been pretty slow on the airplane.  I am sticking to the "do something every day" mentality.  Currently, I have primer drying on the components of the HS forward spar.  I can begin assembling and riveting those parts as a next step.

While we were on vacation I had a piece of angle shipped to re-do the front attach brackets on the Horizontal spar.  They turned out very well this time, using the correct hole sizes.

I have 4 pieces of 3/4" MDF Cut out and ready to start building the cradles for assembly of the Horizontal Spar.  I am headed to Las Vegas tomorrow for an Industry conference, returning late Thursday, then turning around and heading to South Carolina the next week for a project.

I haven't been very good at updating here.  Work has been very busy, and my wife has had a bout with Kidney Stones.  I have managed to get some time in here and there.

My Father in Law came over to help me with the rudder assembly.  I had prepped by using Tim Olson's procedure using Steel angle iron as a back plate.  I drilled the angle and used it to hold the trailing edge straight while we glued the trailing edge together.  This is a pretty busy session as you need to proseal half of the trailing edge, then assemble the stiffeners to the shear clips.  It takes lots of hands and having some help is a plus.

With all that done the rudder spar goes on the assembly and gets riveted in place.  Most of the rivets can be squeezed, but there are a couple that need to be bucked, and it is pretty tight to get your hand to them.

I am holding out on finishing the attachment of the counterweight until I get a torque wrench to properly seat them.

While I was working on wrapping up the rudder, I got to work prepping parts for the Horizontal Stabilizer.  I got both spars and spent a lot of time getting them all deburred.  These spars are about 11 feet long, so I built a couple table tops to put on sawhorses (1 2'x8', 2 2'x4') so that I can have options to reconfigure the work table.

The rear spar is pretty straightforward, there are some hinge brackets and doubler that get riveted in place.  I got everything drilled, and primed and my dad came over to work with me.  This was his first time to work with me on the plane, and we had a good time.  We got all the rear spar riveted together including the inner bearing/bracket.  We got a start on the attach brackets, but then called it a night.

The next step was to complete the fabrication of the attach brackets.  These are cut out of a large piece of aluminum angle.  Not having a belt sander, I rough cut the pieces then used a vixen file to bring them to final dimensions.  The second bracket I made turned out a lot better than the second.

Next there were six pieces of aluminum angle for stringers and caps that needed to be cut to a taper and deburred.  I bypassed the bandsaw and used the aviation snips, getting a forearm workout on the thick metal in the process.

The HS-1013 spar cap gets marked and clamped into place, drilled to the web, deburred, re-attached, drilled to the flange. etc.  This takes quite a while with all of the hole deburring, drilling and waiting on my wimpy little compressor.

I completed the drilling of the spar caps, and temporarily fastened the spar doubler.  This was when I started to realize that I had made a mistake earlier in the day.  After the doubler is attached the attach brackets I finished earlier in the day are fitted to the doubler and spar assembly.  Looking closer, I had mistakenly swapped the size of the holes on the attach brackets.  The means that the 1 hole needed to locate the bracket to the doubler was over sized, and I get to make a new pair of brackets.

I will order the part from Van's on Monday, and work on it when I get back from Vacation in a couple of weeks.

I got on a mission to complete the vertical stabilizer last night since it was so close.  I made a lot of noise at first finishing up what riveting had to be done with the rivet gun.  All of the riveting to the rear spar could be done with the squeezer except for a handful that were too close to hinge brackets.

This part is done!

I got the skins re-attached last night, so that I was ready for riveting the middle ribs to the skin.  My father-in-law came over and we got right to work.  For the middle ribs it helps to have one person reaching in with the bucking bar, while the other uses the rivet gun. 

The riveting process goes like this

1. Rivet the skin to the middle nose rib.  Start at front spar riveting both sides, and work forward
2. Rivet the skin to the top rib forward of the front spar
3. Rivet the bottom nose rib in place
4. Rivet the skin to the forward spar.
   1. For the area above the middle rib, uncleco just enough so you can get your hand and a bucking bar in
   2. For the area below the middle rim, remove the bottom inspar rib
5. Rivet the skin to the middle inspar rib
6. Place the bottom inspar rib back in place and rivet it to the rear spar, and it and the nose rib to the forward spar
7. Rivet the skin to the bottom inspar rib, skipping the fairing attach holes marked previously
8. Rivet the skin to the rear spar
9. Finish riveting the Spar caps to the rear spar below the skins

Working with my father in law, we got most of the way throuh step 4.  This worked out great because there were some difficult spots where it was good to have a second pair of hands and eyes.

My father-in-law was going to come over Tuesday night to help with construction while our wives were in their master gardener class.  This would be the perfect opportunity for some help doing the skins of the vstab, where you have to reach in with a bucking bar while driving rivets from the outside.  It could be done solo, but why contort when you can get help.

In order to get that help, I needed to get the skeleton built back up and riveted together by the time he got here.

I had to complete several of the rivets on the rear spar above the upper attach points, then build the skeleton back up with clecos.  Most of the rivets could be squeezed, and the "Main Squeeze" did a great job.

There were a couple of places where the parts wanted to pull apart, and I couldn't get a clamp on to pull them in just right, so my bride was nice enough to come down and help me hold them together.

On saturday I got up and decided that it was time to get the priming done on the vertical stabilizer parts.  I had done some research on how to setup my Harbor Freight cheapo HVLP gun, and set out to put the tips into action.

I setup a makeshift rack outside to hang the parts from and went to work scuffing the parts, then wiping them down with acetone to remove any residue or oils from fingers.  Then I hung the parts on the rack and mixed up a small batch of primer.  To make a long story short, I needed more pressure at the gun, a cleaner filter on the gun, and a little more time to experiment.  I didn't get very good coverage, and the primer has an orange peel texture.  However, I do feel that the protection is probably adequate for my climate.

Once all the parts had dried I brought them in and started the final assembly, riveting components together as called for.  The rear spar gets most of the initial work riveting the spar doubler and spar caps together, then riveting the rudder hinge brackets in place.  The hinge brackets were difficult to squeeze, so I had to drive those rivets closest to the bracket.

With the Spar caps drilled to the rear spar of the vertical stabilizer completed during the EAA 1218 workshop, I got started finishing the work on the rear spar.

• back drilled the spar flange to the caps
• removed and deburred all of the holes 
• Reassembled, and attached the rudder hinge brackets, and match drilled them
• Machine Countersink rear spar web 1/8" holes below the top rudder attach bracket holes
• Attached Inspar ribs, front spar, and top rib, match drilled
• Attach and match drill nose ribs

After building the skeleton, I set out to attach the skin.  I had read on other build logs, that the nose ribs were a tad long, and that if I tried to force the skin on, I would create marks on the skin.  The advice was to remove some material, up to 1/8" from the front of the ribs.  I also checked with Dennis Keller who is at about the same stage in his building to see if he was going to be doing the same thing.  The answer was yes.  I marked the nose ribs 1/8" in, to use as my maximum, after checking that I had proper edge distance from any holes on the flange.  I used the 6" scotch-brite wheel to remove the pointed section of the rib where the web bends to the flange, and generally made that a smoother transition.  I only removed about 1/16" of material.  I reattached the nose ribs, and could see that the holes would come much closer to lining up, without having  to use a lot of force on the skin, yet still fit snugly.  I had to use several clecos to work the ribs into aligning with the skin holes.  It was pretty cool to insert a cleco, and watch the next 2 or 3 holes line up.  The rule is, if it doesn't fit, you are doing something wrong.  It is encouraging when you put two pieces of metal together and all the holes line up.

On August 9th, our EAA 1218 Chapter hosted a metal workshop.  This workshop, the first in a series, was intended to introduce techniques for working with Aluminum for aircraft construction, specifically aluminum preparation and fabrication.  John Smith is in charge of the workshops, and has built his own RV-4, and is very knowledgeable on fabrication and building.  We set up three work stations at the hanger, where we had different tasks planned.  The first station was manned by John where he was instructing on bending, corner radius cutting, and deburring.  The next station was mine, where I had the rear spar from the RV-10 Vertical Stabilizer, where we were going to be deburring, then clamping the spar caps, and match drilling the caps to the spar web.  I also had several of the ribs, and the forward spar that needed deburring on the lightening holes.  The last station was manned by Benny Butler, where he was working with one of the spar caps that had been rough cut, and needed to be filed to final dimensions, then deburred.

We had about an hour and a half of work time, and everyone seemed to enjoy the hands on aspects.  There were lots of questions, and interest was high.  Next month, we will continue the series, introducing more drilling, dimpling, countersinking, and the various riveting techniques.