Brief Description: Joining the Rudder Skins - Part 2
Today was a long and productive session. With the sealant mixed I had two hours to get the skins riveted together. I screwed up a little by not removing the spar assembly while I was installing pop rivets on the shear clips and stiffeners. I managed to get it done, but not without a lot of bad words being said.
This was a solo job so I rigged up a couple of strings attached to my overhead racks and use them to draw the skin back. I managed to get everything done and put the last cleco in the trailing edge just as my timer for the two hour application life of the sealant went off.
I pop riveted the shear clips to the spar and riveted the attach strips on the bottom of the skin. The horn brace has four rivets common to the skins on each side, but the frontmost rivet is in an almost impossible to get to location. I left these two rivets out for now until I figure out how these can be set. Maybe I need to design a custom bucking bar.
The sealant I used (3M AC-232-B2 from Aircraft Spruce) has a 48 hour cure time at 77 deg F, but it was about 60 when I used it. The general rule of thumb is for every 20 deg F colder you double the cure time. I'll let this sit for four days before I touch it again.
Applying sealant with roller. I ended up using a foam roller instead of the fuzzy one pictured here.
I used a couple of strings to hole the rudder skin up.
Dead straight! Let's hope it stays that way when I remove the clecos.
