Brief Description: Riveting the Rudder skeleton assembly
The lower rudder assembly gets a bit tricky. The parts fit in a certain way and I made sure to recheck the plans several times. One issue that I ran into was that when I used a step drill to enlarge the hole for the rod end on the bottom rib it was slightly misaligned with the rest of the assembly. I used a 3/8" sharp drill bit to match drill and then disassembeled and deburred. I test fit the rod end in the hole after clecoing and it fit perfectly.
I wanted to get by without using any pop rivets so I planned my assembly and riveted as I went. I started by sqeezing the rivets that attached the reinforcement plate to the spar with the three top rivets leaving the bottom ones opened for the rest of the assembly.
I then placed the bottom rib and spacer on the oposite side and cleco'd the rudder horn to the assembly. I sqeezed the rivets carefully with a longeron squeezer yoke. I couldn't get the squeezer along the flanges of the bottom rib so I had to buck those two rivets.
I then added the R-710 and was able to sqeeze all the rivets with the longeron yoke. Mission acomplished, no pop rivets. I went slowly and without a pneumatic sqeezer it would have been very difficult.
I then had to buck the tip rib because of the counterballance skin, and ended up getting a small "smiley" on one of the rivets.
