Today started off innocently enough with me getting back into a rhythm after being out the past 10 days on vacation (which by the way was magnificent – thanks for asking). I completed riveting the leading edge spars on each of the elevators and then moved on to the counterbalance ends of the elevators. Attaching these to the skins was a bit more difficult than it should have been. It ended up looking really nice, but I could have certainly been more efficient. There were some rivets that were really difficult to get to. You had to peel back one of the skins that had already pretty much been riveted into place, jam your hand in there with a bucking bar, hold it for dear life with just a couple of fingers, then get after it with the riveting gun. Pretty intense, but it turned out looking really nice. Overall, I’m quite pleased.
In this picture above, the difficult holes are the ones grouped in a column of six holes right where the skin ends on the protruding counterweight arm. You would move the elevator off the workbench a bit, peel that bottom skin open, and… well.. rivet.
I lost track of time and kept moving forward. I was pretty excited to be able to get some more time in this weekend on the project so I decided to apply the tank sealant tonight. It shouldn’t take long, just some foam ribs and the trailing edge stiffener.
There it is. My best friend. Tank sealant. I mixed it up per the instructions and once again got really consistent results. I hesitate to shell out for the larger quart size of this stuff as it only has a 6 month shelf life and I know the likelihood of me getting to that part of the wings within 6 months is low. So I use these caulk gun cans instead. I know it likely is costing me more (especially when you find out in a second how I’ll need even more…) but I’ve made peace with that.
There you have it! I used the same piece of drilled angle iron that I used on my rudder for both of the elevators at the same time. It worked great. So great that I got distracted by the fact that I did not end up using the tank sealant to place the foam ribs in my trim tabs at the same time. Oh well, another tube of tank sealant and another day I suppose. Worse things have happened on this project, that’s for sure.
Overall, it was an especially productive day and I’m pleased with the results.
Total time today = 3 hours
Total time empennage = 118 hours
Total time aircraft = 118 hours