Elevators - 3 hrs 26 mins (Elev. 6:42, Empennage 111:07, Total 125:03)
Rivet count: 0 (Total 2,154)The first hour and half was spent deburring edges. It went surprisingly faster than I expected, and I couldn't be happier. It also helps that I deburred quite a bit yesterday. The build started by assembling the 16 elevator ribs and drilling the common holes. Easy.
Then came assembly of the elevator tips. I had to flute the outer ribs first, though I did notice that Van's sent the pieces slightly fluted already. It wasn't quite straight, but it was nice to have it started. This is the outer edge where the counterweights will eventually go. In tried and true tradition, I started off a chapter by assembling something incorrectly. Pretty sure I've done this in each of the previous chapters as well. Luckily I caught it soon. I noticed that two of the holes weren't quite matching up, and that should have cued me in. It wasn't until I assembled the second tip that I noticed the picture in the instructions. Problem solved. Match drilled half the holes, swapped the clecos and match drilled the second half.
I was going to remove the lines of vinyl along the outer edges of the skins as I've done with the previous parts, but two things happened. First, yesterday I had removed one side of all the skins. I didn't bother to check, so for two of them, it was the inside and for two the outside. Second, there's so many lines of rivet holes on the skins, it wouldn't be worth the hour spent with the soldering iron. I removed the inner vinyl from two more skins, and I'll leave the last two vinyls on until it is time for deburring/countersinking.
The next page in the plans is dedicated completely to bending a tab on the four skins. Measure, clamp, bend. I even got to use the rivet gun on a really low setting to help. Each bend came out perfect, but we'll see if the bends match each other when it comes time for assembly. A great week of building! -M
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