This work session was spent primarily on manufacturing the wooden bending fixture to bend the two small tabs on the elevator. I determined the angle (approx 12 degrees) of the completed elevator. To make my fixture I purchased some oak wood from Lowe's home improvement and aircraft supplies to do it. There are many comments in blogs that warn to use hardwood instead of soft pine....so the cost of messing up the elevator is far greater than the cost of the hardwood....easy decision!!
Using bandsaw and beltsander I manufactured a very nice fixture. After trying the fit and being satisfied, I moved to the next step of putting double sided carpet tape on fixture so that the fixture won't move during the bending process. I did sand a small radius on the tab side in order to have a little radius in the bent corner. The tape made it a little difficult to get the wood positioned exactly and it took a little fiddling with it to get it in position.
Once in position it was time to bend. I double checked to be sure I bent the right tab first. The bottom side tab is bent first as you want the top tab to be bent down over the bottom in order to have a water shedding capability. With everything clamped down very firmly, I proceeded to make the bends...voila....done...and came out very nicely!!!!
The amazing thing is that it took about an hour and a half to make the fixture and get it set up and LESS than 10 minutes to do the bending!!! Well....that's airplane building!
