Had to go in to work this weekend, but still managed a few hours on the horizontal stabiliser wing tips across the two days.
Vans provide a few options for closing off the HS wing tip fairings, and I ended up choosing the balsa wood method. First up I shaped a piece of 25mm balsa wood to fit inside the rearward facing opening of each wing tip then, with the tip clecoed in position on the wing, I glued them in place with araldite.
Once the araldite had set then I removed the tips and filled the inside gaps with epoxy. I also decided to add a strip of thin aluminium to the inside of each tip (see second photo below) so that the blind rivets that hold the tip on have a bit more "meat" to secure to.
While admiring my work I noticed that I had overlooked something several months ago when assembling the HS. There are a number of inboard rib top skin rivet holes that need to be left open so that the empennage fairing can be attached at a later date. Hmmm, I went and put rivets in 'em.
Not to worry. I carefully drilled the offending rivet heads off and punched them out. I've ordered a heap of spare nutplates, so when they arrive I'll rivet them in to these spots to allow easy removal of the fairing when doing inspections.
Araldite, then epoxy, to hold the balsa HS tip formers in place
I added some thin aluminium strips to give a more solid backing for the blind rivets
Drilling out a number of HS top skin rivets that needed to be left open for now