Follow my Journey of building a Vans RV-8 Aircraft
Time: 4 hours
Today I spent the morning at St. Charles, IL to watch the Memorial Day parade and pay tribute to this who have served and those who are serving our country to keep us free. Their sacrifice and dedication is what allows me to do things like build my RV and for them I am truly thankful!
When I returned to the hangar I started the priming of the rudder substructure. I will get to rivet sometime this week after the primer cures.
Time: 2 Hours
For the last 5 days or so I have been fighting strep throat. It seems the older you get the worse that is. High dose antibiotics and a lot if rest has me back from the dead and among the living. Not how I wanted to spend the Memorial Day weekend but that’s life I guess. I felt good enough yesterday to get a couple of hours of work done in the hangar. This was just prep work for the priming of the rudder substructure. All the dimpling, deburring and edge finishing has been completed and all ready for primer.
Time: 4 Hours
I spent the afternoon yesterday working on the rudder substructure. This included the fabrication of the rudder horn spacer and the rudder fiberglass bottom attach strips.
Next was the rudder horn brace trimming. I have read where builders have run into some edge distances on the finished product due to to much trimming. So I measured several times and came up with a good line.
The next job was to enlarge a hole at the end if the bottom rib so that the hinge rod end can fit through.
A little trimming and shaping on the rudder horn and the brace to get a good fit.
The rudder attach strips, the attach point for the bottom fiberglass tips, needed to be lined up so that they could be matched drilled.
The finished rudder, now to disassemble it, mark it, edge finish it, deburr it, dimple it and prime it. Then I can put it all back together and rivet it.
Time: 1 Hour
Last night I ran over to a friends home to have some expert help with bending the trailing edge of my rudder. This process is required to get a narrow and straight bend at the end of your rudder. The catch is that you want to maintain a nice round radius in this spot. Van’s gives you plans on how to make a “break or brake” to bend your rudder. It’s simply made from 2×6 wood and hinges. You then wedge your rudder in the opening and use force to evenly bend the skin. I used a 3/16 wood dowel taped to the inside of the rudder skin to help maintain a good radius while bending.
After several “easy” squeezes we got it to the perfect position. The radius was perfect and a nice clean line down the trailing edge.
Time: 2 Hours
My flight schedule changed this week so I was able to get in the hangar yesterday for a couple of hours. The plan was to get the rudder stiffeners riveted to the rudder skin. You have to do this task before bending the trailing edge of the rudder skin, otherwise you would have no room to rivet. The best practice to rivet the stiffeners is to back rivet. Back riveting has you use the rivet gun on the shop head (the end of the rivet that you are smashing) using a special back rivet set in the gun.
The process begins with placing the rivets in their holes and placing a special tape over them. This tape is sticky on the edges and not in the middle and allows the rivets to be held in place.
You then turn the work over to expose the ends of the rivets and place the second piece to be riveted over the rivet ends. You then place a back riveting plate, a 3/8″ thick piece of steal that has been machined smooth, under the work. This steal supports the rivets as you rivet the shop head.
Once you finish the row of rivets you can then remove the tape to reveal a nice clean line of rivets. It took me just at two hours to get both sides done with several breaks in there. Next up will be to bend the trailing edge of the rudder, I will get the help from an expert for that job.
