Rudder Construction Continues

The last several hours in the work shop have been dedicated to rudder construction. Everything is going well so far, but then drilling, edge finishing de-burring and dimpling haven't been problems for me. That's why I'm scheduling some time to go over to Grov-Air to get some help on riveting the rudder. My goal is to make my rudder the absolutely best component to date.

Riveting the stiffeners onto the left and right rudder skins was a breeze. I really like back-riveting. It's easy and makes great looking rivets. I then set about assembling the remainder of the rudder.

Down at the base of the rudder are some interesting features. The instructions from Van's are somewhat lacking in this area. For example they omit the drilling of the spar reinforcement plates, as well as the rudder horn (R-710). Other builder's have made note of this, I'm surprised that the instructions are still neglecting these features. I also found my self wondering why the bottom rib (R-904), skin (R-901-R, R-901-L) and bottom attachment strips (R-918) aren't drilled all together. The skin and rib can be drilled while clamped with Clecos, but with clamps all three could be placed carefully and drilled together. As it is I ended up drilling the rib and skin with a reamer and then all three a second time with a drill bit. I think this may have slightly elongated some of the holes in the rib and or skin, but all look satisfactory to proceed on to riveting.

So I think the rudder is going really well. The last bit of preparation for riveting is to counter sink the extruded trailing edge (R-916). The hardest part of countersinking is setting up the countersink cage for the correct depth. Once that's done I should be able to knockout all 40 to 50 counter sinks in about an hour or two.