12/6/2003
8 hours: Before I resumed riveting today, I noticed that there was a high spot on the skin about midspar. Peeling back the other skin which I hadn't yet riveted, I found that one of the stiffeners was making contact with the rivet on the hinge reinforcement plate. Fortunately I was able to cut it back with some angle-cutters.
As I was reassembling things after that ordeal, I found that the skin didn't fit right. I was about to start drilling out a bunch of rivets (at least 30) to reposition it, but thankfully I took a break to reconsider what was going on. As it turned out, the stiffeners were getting wedged together on the other end of the rudder, causing this bubble. Once I installed the trailing edge wedge, it went away.
Ah yes, that troublesome trailing edge wedge. I hadn't installed it because I goofed up the last one, and received an undrilled replacement from Van's a while ago. This time I was better equipped to countersink it: A foot-long piece of aluminum angle with a hole in it to guide the countersink, and a single-flute countersink bit that is far less prone to chattering. I highly recommend it -- the only problem is that it can get loaded up with shavings on occasion, but it is easy to clean out. Also, since the material is so thin by the time you get to the back side, clamping the work down for...every...single...hole... is pretty much mandatory.
Mostly riveted. For some reason my spar rivets were cleating quite a bit, I had to drill out 15 (!) of them. The angles on the rudder are a bit subtle...maybe I was holding the squeezer wrong (also using that 4-inch no-hole yoke doesn't help) or perhaps I drilled them at the wrong angle.
