1.6 Hours -
Each side of the rudder has 8 stiffeners. When these are cut from the provided stock, they are all the same length. Unfortunately, only the bottom most stiffener, on each side, needs to be the full length. The rudder becomes narrower near the top, so all the other stiffeners must be cut to the appropriate length.
The right rudder stiffeners laid out on the skin.
I started by laying the stiffeners out on the skin and marking their locations. Since the forward end of the stiffeners will be cut, I used the punched holes in the skin as a guide and marked the forward most hole for each stiffener. Then, I lined up the final hole in the un-cut stiffener with the final hole in a finished one and marked the unfinished one for cutting. Once all 14 stiffeners that needed shortening were marked, I proceeded to cut them with my band saw.
I marked the length of the stiffener using the skin and then a finished stiffener helped me mark where to cut.
All the left stiffeners were cut to length with my band saw.
With the band saw making quick work of the stiffeners, I moved on to final drilling the stiffeners to the skins. As an attempt to save my workbench tops, I places some quarter inch plywood beneath the skins for drilling. I drilled through the stiffener, skin and plywood. A cleco could then be inserted through the hole, clamping the skin and stiffener to the plywood.
I left all the stiffeners clecoed to the skins. The next couple of days will be spend deburring and dimpling all the parts.
16 stiffeners final drilled to the rudder skins.
