Category Archives: Rudder

Time: 2 Hours

Two hours today taking care of all the little details on the stiffeners and the rudder skin. All the edge finishing on the stiffeners is done along with all deburring, including the VERY thin skins which I did with my fingers. I then dimpled all the stiffeners and skins. Last up as to prime the stiffeners and let them dry. My flight schedule has me gone until Friday followed by a weekend with my kids, then off to Boise for 5 days to help out with our crew that’s based there. That means I won’t be doing any work on the RV-8 for a week and a half, boo!

Time: 4 Hours

I added a track on my wall to add some different hooks so that as items got finished I could hang them for storage.

Once I got all my errands done I was able to get a little over 4 hours in the hangar. First up was to trim the stiffeners for the rudder. There are 16 stiffeners, 8 on each side of the rudder. Van’s sends 5 pieces of thin angle aluminum. Each piece has several stiffeners laid out by pre-punched holes. The plans have you draw lines between two holes which outlines the the individual stiffeners.

Once a rough cut is made I then drew the lines to be cut on the bandsaw.

Next up was to take each stiffener to the scotch-brite wheel and shape them to the right shape.

Then I set half for the left side and half for the right side. Then they got cleco’d to the skin. Tomorrow I will get to match drilling and prepping(deburring, dimpling and priming) so that they can be riveted.