I spent a fair amount of time reading through all the posts online wherein RV builders across the globe relate their woes when it comes to the folding of the tabs on both the trim tab and the elevator. It appears that the general push of the sentiment is "don't even bother with the fold - just make the riblet from the start"! Whilst that is pretty much the sentiment of the majority of related posts (results of Google searches), one must however keep in mind that it is primarily the woes which are posted and not the success stories and I'm sure there are substantially more of the latter!
Whilst the plans do call for the bend of the elevator tabs first, I opted to bend those on the trim tab first. My logic being that the trim tab skin is much thinner than that of the elevator, so it should be easier to bend. It would also be substantially cheaper to replace the trim tab skin as opposed to the elevator skin were I to make a mess of the process, never mind all the work that has already gone into the elevator that I would have to redo.
I spent quite a bit of time making sure that my bed lines were marked correctly. I tried to "mock install" everything on the elevator as best I could, lining up rivet lines to check the trim tab positioning. Made sure that the lines on the trim tab and elevator tabs were in fact parallel o each other and that the spacing was correct.
Using the bending blocks I manufactured yesterday for the elevator, I set it up on the work, ensuring that everything was lined up perfectly. I cranked down on the huge C-clamps I was using - basically as hard as I possibly could, figuring the tighter, the better - even gave it a tug or two to make sure it didn't budge nanometer!
< KitLog Pro text length limitation - please continue to Part 2>
Outboard tabs folded
Starting the fold of the lower of the two inboard tabs.
Trim tab folding succesfull - inboard side depicted here
