Brief Description: Practice Project 3, Fianl assembly and trailing ed
As part of preparing to finish the assembly of the rudder, I decided to take a small detour and practice my construction techniques on the Van's Practice Kit. I riveted together the body of the unit. Completing the rivets that attached the skin to the spar and then squeezed the rivets that attatch the skin to the two ribs. I felt good to finally rivet with any real worries. Of course I wanted every rivet perfect, and I again did not achieve that. But I did get a bit of time to work on my riveting technique and get incrementally better with the 2x gun and host of different bucking bars. Most essential to this practice session was countersinking the trailing edge wedge. This will be a vital step on the rudder and I wanted to get it right here. I started with the countersink cage 0.008 of an inch deeper than the rivet head, I later eeked this up to 0.01 lower because that allowed the dimple to sit fractionally lower in the countersunk hole, while not exactly lettting it lie flat. I finished the work session off by clecoing the edge together. I had to alternate the directions on a few clecos due to the size of the match drilled holes in the skin (a problem only evident on the practice kit due to the drill angle) and also to make the final trailing edge straight.
Next up I will proseal the tail and then attempt to rivet it to practice up for the rudder. What can I say, I won't pass up the chance to attempt practice bleeding.
