12/22/2003
3 hours: The trim tab is coming along but with the holidays I am not getting many hours in the shop. Today I riveted the servo arm on, and bent the skin to the final angle with a 2x4 wood bending brake. Unfortunately, despite sorting through all of the 2x4's the lumber yard had, the wood was somewhat warped so the result required a bit of adjustment by hand, which will lead to some cosmetic flaws...
Bending the end tabs was unnecessarily difficult. On the end without the servo arm in the way it was pretty easy, just clamp it in some wood with an angled cut in it, and bang away...
But on the other side you have already riveted things in the way so it's not easy to clamp it to anything, really. All of these bends could have been done with a hand seamer, prior to doing the final lengthwise bend. I need to stop following the directions so carefully.
The final bend looks pretty good, not perfect, but good enough. I met a guy at the EAA meeting who had to re-order the trim tab skin 3 times before getting these bends right so I'm going to count myself lucky.
