Today I finished riveting the Horizontal Stabilizer. Zak came out and hung out for a few hours and tried his hand at riveting. Today became one of those trying days when missing a simple detail in the instructions results in almost two hours of rework. I ended up riveting the rear spar in upside, and caught after setting the 200 rivets that hold it in…so it was a nice long session of drilling out rivets before re-riveting the rear spar back in, this time in the correct orientation.
Today I countersunk the Horizontal Stabilizer spars. 200 holes each, for a total of 400 countersunk holes. Then I got started on riveting the Horizontal Stab together. I ran out of steam about half way through. I should be able to wrap up the riveting tomorrow.
The rib and spar structure riveted together The Horizontal Stab in the cradles I built. The riveting is about half way done at this point.
Today I dimpled and primed the Horizontal Stabilizer skins. I also primed the remaining ribs. A little more countersinking and I’ll be ready to rivet everything together.
Wendy came down tonight and helped me dimple the skins. It's much easier with a second person.
I started the day off building cradles that Van’s calls for. There used to hold the Horizontal Stabilizer for final assembly. After that I riveted the doublers onto the front spar. I finished up the night deburring and dimpling all the ribs. Tomorrow I’ll get them primed and ready for riveting.
The Horizontal Stabilizer cradles. They'll get clamped to the workbench during final assembly The front spar with the doublers riveted on The ribs all dimpled and deburred and ready for priming The rest of the ribs ready for priming
Tonight I continued work on the Horizontal Stabilizer. Most of the work was on the forward spar. Similar to the work I did yesterday on the rear spar. A lot of back drilling, deburing and countersink. I managed to get all the parts primed before calling it a night. Should be able to rivet the fwd spar components together tomorrow.
Rear spar and doubler after being primed Spar reinforcements after being primed
Today I started working on the Horizontal Stabilizer. Most of the work was on the rear spar. It involved match drilling and the doubler and the spar. Then I primed both of them and riveted them together. Afterwards I match drilled and riveted on the hinge brackets.
Deburring the rear spar The doubler riveted to the rear spar I used the C-Frame to rivet the hinge brackets on The rear spar, doubler and hinges riveted on, with all parts primed.