Brief Description: Glueing the rudder trailing edge
Finally at 9:45 PM this evening, I decided to tackle gluing the trailing edge of the rudder. I have been preparing the trailing edge for a while and wanted to make absolutely sure I had all my ducks in a row to do this. As it usually turns out, my fears were unfounded….at least up until now. I cleaned off the worktable next to the one with the rudder and got everything I would need. I first did a dry run and clecloed the rudder between the two aluminium angles to make sure averything lined up. I noticed that a few holes in the upper angle did not quite line up so I marked thes for drilling out but decided later to oversize the top holes in the angle to #30 to provide extra clearance and avoid any binding. I removed all the clecoes and set the angles aside and prepared the tank sealant I purchased from Van’s a month ago. I bought a whole qt of this Chem Seal product (replaces the dreaded Pro Seal) knowing that I will have todiscard it when I do the tanks since the shelf life is only 4 months. The qt kit is $39 so I’m not about to press my luck sealing the tanks. I’ll order another qt when Im ready to do that task. I wasn’t sure how much I needed for the wedge so I made a huge amount…just in case. After I scotch brited..(is that a word!!) the wedge and cleaned it with MEK I started to apply the sealant to one side of the wedge with wooden applicators I made. These worked very well so I will do the same when I do the tanks.
