I did pretty much what the Van's manual said for rolling the leading edge. From reading comments, this is another dreaded step. I guess it is scary since you are bending the skin which a LOT of work had been done on this up to this point. Mess it up and you will replace many hours of work.
I'll say this wasn't as bad as it seemed. I used a wooden broom handle I found at Lowes for a few dollars. I found the straighest one in the bin, but I think even if your dowel wasn't perfect it would still be ok. I wraped it in duct tape, and then taped the dowel to the flange. I started with rolling the flange that would be the "inside" flap first. I gripped it with vise grips and started rolling. Keep it pushed down on the bench as well as you can, then twist with the vise grips on the other side. I removed and re-attached the grips a few times to get enough of a good roll on the flange. I was told that it's good to over-roll it a bit which was easy on the rudder's thin skin, but harder on the elevator. I started with the small top flange then clekoed it in place and moved to the next two flanges. It took some yanking but they did overlap ok.
Rolling the skin with vise grips and the dowel taped to the flange.
It rolled nicely! There is the top rudder flanges.
Rolling the next section. Kind of hard to roll, but just keep rolling until they line up.
