28Nov2017

Moved on to the Rudder!

Ribs for the rudder. Each set of ribs comes as one large piece in the kit. You have to cut the piece in half to get the two ribs, and then you have to trim the angle using a steel straight edge and scribe or pen. The bandsaw comes in real handy for this!

This is the tie down strap for the counterweight in the upper forward end of the rudder. You take these two nutplates and rivet them in place. a #10 screw bolts in from the bottom of the counterweight rib, through the lead weight and into these nutplates to hold the weight in place.

This is what the nutplates looked like after I used the squeezer. The squeezer seems to work well on the size 3 rivets. I haven't had much success with the squeezer on the size 4 rivets yet.

Starting to assemble the skeleton for the rudder. Here I have attached the bottom rib, rudder horn, and three attachment point brackets. These will be where the hinge attaches to the rudder from the Vertical Stabilizer.

A close up of the brackets as I am preparing to rivet everything in place.

This is the rudder horn assembly at the base of the rudder.

These two pictures are my initial attempts at riveting size 4 rivets! As I stated above, I was unable to use the squeezer, so these are my first real attempts at using the bucking bar and rivet gun. Overall, not too displeased with the outcome. A few of them are a little over squeezed, but I used the rivet gauge and ensured none of them were under-squeezed!

And this is where I am at as of today! I have assembled most of the skeleton to this point. After this, I will attach the skins and do the match drilling. After that, I take everything apart, debur everything and then final fit and rivet everything together! I should have this all done by the end of the week!


So, as the title suggests, I have moved forward to working on the rudder! As I stated in my last post, I made a couple mistakes and had to re-order some parts and so, while I wait, I decided to move on to the next step. I was able to put in about 8 hours of work yesterday and got this far on the rudder. I'm pretty impressed with how well it came along! I should have this done within the next couple days, which will be just in time for the replacement parts for the VS to arrive and I will be able to finish that as well!

For the most part, the plans have been fairly straight forward and easy to understand. There have been a few spots that I have had to re-read a few times to understand what the plans are actually calling for, but for the most part, it's been pretty easy to this point.

27Nov2017


Costly mistakes.....

     So, I have had to re-order parts a few times now. The first was the rear spar for the vertical stabilizer and a rudder hinge bracket because I drilled the wrong hole too large. Now, I have had to order a new rear spar doubler and a new vertical stabilizer skin.

     As I stated before, I am new to a lot of these processes and as such have a bit of a learning curve. So, I delved in to the world of counter sinking the other day and it did not go as planned! The doubler plate for the rear spar on the vertical stabilizer requires several holes to be countersunk to allow for the dimpling of the spar itself. I new of the warning to start small and work your way toward the depth that you are looking for and I even tried to abide by that philosophy. However, when I did that, it didn't make any difference, so I kept adjusting the countersink, thinking that it just wasn't deep enough....... What I didn't realize is that the guide tip of the countersink bit was hitting the workbench and therefore not allowing the bit to make contact regardless of how I set the bit depth. So, when I moved the hole over the edge of the workbench, I failed to readjust the depth first and I ate through almost half the width of the metal, which was far too deep for the rivet head.

     I had considered filling that one hole with epoxy or even trying to make a filler washer out of aluminum and epoxy, but ultimately decided to replace the whole piece with a new one and doing it over. Better to be safe than sorry.

     The other mistake that I made was on the vertical stabilizer skin itself. The upper hole closest to the bend in the skin as it goes around the forward end of the skeleton is a real tight clearance when trying to use the squeezer. I had to try to actuate the squeezer about half way to be able to fit it in to the space. Unfortunately, I didn't line the male dimpler up with the hole correctly and punctured a hole in the skin along the edge of the existing hole. It wasn't close enough to cover with the rivet, so I bought a new vertical stabilizer skin to do it over. I have learned from these mistakes, however. I have learned that I cant try to cut corners and outsmart the build, and that I have to stop and re-examine why something is not working the way I had expected before proceeding.

What are you gonna do?! Now, on to the rest of the build! I am going to start work on the rudder itself until I get the parts in for the vertical stabilizer.

Had to order a de-burring bit extension for my drill to clean the rivet holes on the inside. It finally arrived this afternoon and I was able to finish deburring the VS components! I cleaned and primed most of the parts before I had to leave for work and will get them finished tomorrow when I get home in the morning.

I am using a self etching primer spray paint. It goes on pretty well so far. Just make sure that you have a well ventilated area as the fumes get pretty strong even with the garage door wide open. I don't plan on priming all parts and pieces, but will prime the ribs of each of the major components. I don't plan on priming anything within the tailcone or fuse. I am only priming the ribs as those will be very difficult to completely inspect later. I feel that the anodized aluminum is more than enough for protection and I am just going a little beyond for these few parts. I don't want to add unnecessary weight.


I know that there is a major debate, to which all newly anointed builders are introduced to from the get go, in the debate over "to prime, or not to price". I have landed on the side of "not to prime" for the most part. Some would say that you should prime so that it doesn't create an issue when you go to sell it, but I am not building this for the next person, I am building this for me and my children! If and when I do decide to sell this plane, I wont be concerned about a buyer not making the purchase because it wasn't bathed in primer!


But enough about that! From here, I am planning on dimpling the skin for the VS and then moving on to final assembly. I have had a little bit of trouble with my clekos not sliding in to the rivet holes as smoothly and effortlessly as I would like. I will see how that looks as I start to put rivets to metal. If they start to get too difficult to put in place, then I will redrill some of the holes as needed.

I will get some pictures uploaded as soon as I am able! So far, I am enjoying this process very much!

16 Nov 2017

Vertical Stabilizer

 Here I am, showing off the fruits of my labor..... before I have to tear it all apart again to debur! Here is the frame of the Vertical Stabilizer (VS) all Cleco'd together. After making the mistake of drilling a hole to the wrong size in the initial Rear Spar, my re-ordered parts arrived today and I began working with earnest!

The skin wasn't as difficult as I had imagined it would be, but it wasn't exactly easy either. The holes in the skin seemed to be just a smidge smaller than the clecos and I had to put a little more elbow grease into putting them in place than I had expected.

So, it has been about 2 weeks since I have received the empennage kit. I haven't been able to work on the plane nearly as much as I would have liked, due to a massive "honey do" list for thanksgiving. I have been working on things here and there for about 5 minutes at a time, until I got caught and had to go back to work!

I had completed the first step of attaching the plate doubler to the forward VS spar and then started working on the rear spar. That is where I made my mistake! I misread the instructions and drilled the wrong hole too large in the rudder hinges. Unfortunately in my zest, I also drilled in to the rear spar and therefore opted to re-order both pieces. The process took about 4 business days to arrive, but once they got here, I snuck in to the workshop (garage) and began work!

The process isn't too terrible, although there are a few spots to make sure you read over a few times before commencing. There is a note on the bottom rudder hinge about not final drilling two corner holes. I am unsure at his point as to whether or not that is speaking to two of the three pre-drilled holes, or if, like the upper bottom hinge piece, the two corner holes that it refers to are drilled in later and that all three pre-drilled holes need to be final drilled along with everything else. I figure that I will wait to drill those as they will be very accessible later on when I figure it out. (the bolt holes don't get drilled in until the VS is attached to the cone, from what I could tell)

I'm looking forward to more days like today, where I am able to get a significant amount of work done in little time. This took me just about 2 hours worth of work, most of which was reading and re-reading the instructions!

Some of you may notice that I have removed all of the bluing. I have decided that since the whole airplane will be scuffed significantly when it goes to paint, I am not going to worry about protecting the skins with the bluing. I figure any scratches that would be deeper than what they will do at paint would probably damage the skin the same with or without the bluing. The benefit being that I have heard in more than one blog that the bluing just gets harder and harder to take off the longer that it is in place.

12 Nov 2017

Vertical Stabilizer

Finally starting to get to the good stuff! I am only able to get into the workshop for a few minutes here and a few minutes there. That "Honey-Do" list just never seems to go away! Its getting close to thanksgiving, (which means, its still a few weeks away!) but we get to be in crisis mode!

 

This is the first cleco in the first steps! I had to savor this moment a bit! Unfortunately I was still awaiting tools at this point so I wasn't able to do much more than this! I have since finished the final drilling for this doubler plate and dimpled and riveted it in to place. I started to move on to the next step, but made an error in drilling (meaning I drilled the wrong hole) and had to order replacement parts from vans. I am hoping to have those by the 14th of November!

So far, this seems to be a VERY slow start...... but it is the holiday season and there is much to be done before our home is invaded by 20 starving family members! What are you going to do?!

Well, I was able to reserve my N number! From now on, this plane will forever be known as N630ST. My wife and I's first initials along with our wedding anniversary! Some may say corny, and I say......yep.... but that's life!