Brief Description: Prmed stiffeners / Riveted on stiffeners
I started today with the priming. I only wanted to prime the skin in the area that the stiffeners would go; after all of the taping I think I would have done better to just do like I did the first time and drill and dimple the entire skin. I am just being lazy; I do not want to get the spray gun out so I am doing the stiffeners with the rattle can primer.
I had a couple of extra stiffeners so I riveted them onto the old skin for practice. That went well so I tackled the new skin. Well I learned a few things that I think were my problem before, it is difficult to quantify since more than one thing has changed. After all is said and done I think the biggest problem was with enlarged holes from over dimpling. On the side that I used stiffeners from my first round I had 6 rivets I felt had to come out all of them on the old stiffeners. On the side that had all new stiffeners, I only redid one rivet. Having the rivet plate a little above flush with the board does help as well as using true riveting tape. I also think I was pressing down too hard on the rivet gun. I am sure the combination of things all has had some effect, if I had to pick one thing that has helped it would be proper deburring.
I am quit happy with the results; I did have one of the trailing edge rivets set a little high and somewhat distorted the skin. I think I did not hold the skin tight against the plate. The new rivet did not look much better. It is not terribly noticeable unless you are up close. If I need a trim tab on the rudder I guess I can put it by this area.
The last thing I did was try out the bending brake with the old rudder skin. It seems to work well; in the photo you can see the bent rudder skin. It actually could be tweaked a little more. I knocked off for the day since it is Super Bowl Sunday.
