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Date:  3-15-2009
Number of Hours:  2.50
Manual Reference:  
Brief Description:  Bending rudder leading edge

Started by riveting remaining couple of rivets at the trailing edge of bottom attach plate (that will hold the fiberglass bottom) and the top rib. It is nearly impossible to do. I researched several sites and even EAA videos in an attempt to complete without the use of pulled rivets. I managed to complete all except one. The problem now is that this rivet sits exactly opposite the one on opposite skin so when I insert the rivet, there is less than 1/8 inch left to insert any kind of bucking bar or plate…. And believe me I tried everything from my ground down axe and even the thin blade from a block plane. I did learn an interesting trick from Larry Anderson off the EAA web site for hard to reach rivets. It’s basically an offset flush riveting technique. Instead of driving the shop head as usually done, you slip a steel bar over the rivet and then bang the bar as close as possible to the rivet. It works very well in the video but the problem I have is the steel bar I nee to use is so thin that there isn’t enough mass. I’ll try to think of another method and leave this last one for later.

Next up was the bending of the rudder leading edge. My first mistake was I started to do the work without thinking through the process and in the process, I forgot to put a slight bend in the edge before rolling the skin. I also used a 1inch steel pipe I had laying around instead of waiting to get a ¾ inch pipe. As you can imagine, the result was less than perfect. I could not understand why Van could not provide a nice pre-formed leading edge which could then be attached to a wider spar flange to accommodate a but joint which could then be attached using pulled rivets along the flange. I also tried to bend the entire length, by myself. Once I realized that I had not edge rolled….. made obvious by the wave in the edge, I tried to do this after the fact using the vise grip edge rolling tool. This think gave me a fit. I later purchased the Avery edge rolling tool for the elevator with much better results.
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