Brief Description: Primed elevator and rudder parts, Rivet rudder fra
Today I spent a lot of time in the shop. I dimpled the perimeter holes of the rudder skin and I prepped the elevator skins for priming. I am at the stage where I need to prime the rudder spar and ribs so while I am at it I want to prime the elevator skins and stiffeners. So I spent the morning getting all of these parts ready to prime.
Well this prime session went much better this time. I received some pointers off of VAF and they seemed to work. I mixed the SW P60 primer 2:1 instead of 1.5:1 and that sure seemed to help. I am also getting better at using the gun; I made an adjustment to the fan pattern and pressure that also seems to help. You can see from the photo of the parts on the table they all have a light green hue, instead of the speckled egg look.
With the primer dry I began to rivet the rudder spar and stiffeners. You begin by riveting on the reinforcing plates onto the spar, to include the nut plate units. I left them to do all at once, since they are a different size rivet this minimizes adjustments to the squeezer. The directions have you cleco the entire structure together then rivet, I left off the 704 rib since this makes the spar much easier to handle. The 710 rudder brace was fairly easy since one of the yokes I picked up for the squeezer was a longeron yoke. With this I was able to get to all of the holes on the 710 brace. I may not be able to reach the most forward holes on the side, but that will come when I rivet on the skin. I used a flashlight and an inspection mirror to check the shop heads. I placed most of the rivets so that they could be drilled out if required. I finally ran out of steam and will pick up the riveting tomorrow.
