It was inevitable – the match drilling marathon began. Van’s recommends keeping every single hole clecoed on the front and rear spars of the elevator while you are match drilling the skins. This means pulling out a cleco, drilling the hole, marking it as drilled, replacing the cleco, then moving on to the next hole. It is a painstakingly slow process, but worth it to prevent having a warped skin during the final rivet and assembly.
Nothing too exciting here – just match drilling!
Cleco every hole. Every. Single. Hole.
Here are the markings proving that I truly did drill out every single hole. I can’t imagine doing this process without marking the holes. Even the slightest interruption would set you back a ton of time to discover where you left off.
I also want to reiterate pretty much every piece of advice given to me on every RV-10 page and message board available: buy more 3/32 clecos. Seriously. I have 500 and still found myself robbing one elevator to feed the other so that I could complete this process.
Total time today = 2 hours
Total time empennage = 85 hours
Total time aircraft = 85 hours