1.0 Hours -
On to the dreaded rudder!
The rudder doesn’t look that difficult, but everyone really makes a fuss over the trailing edge. After much research, I have my gameplan…let the work begin.
Ready to tackle the rudder.
Because the rudder has such thin skin (0.016″ aluminum sheet), stiffeners are used to give it rigidity. These stiffeners are almost like small riblets. Van’s provides 8 pieces of rudder stiffener stock that are pre-punched and notched. Using the notches as guides, the 8 pieces can be rough cut into the 16 required stiffeners.
The rudder stiffeners have notches that show you where to cut...like an expensive game of connect the dots.
From the 8 pieces of stock, I rough cut 16 rudder stiffeners with the band saw.
The aft end of the stiffeners have to be tapered so they don’t interfere with each other or the skin. Again, Van’s makes this simple by giving you two notches. Connect the notches with a straightedge and line, cut along that line with a band saw…stiffener tapered. My band saw made quick work of this step.
The trailing edge of the stiffeners has to be tapered. I rough cut these with a band saw.
Once all the stiffeners were rough cut, I decided to do the edge finishing on the two lowermost stiffeners only. These two will not need to be cut down any further, while the forward end of all the others will be further cut to length. To finish the edges, I just used my Scotch-Brite wheel . The first two turned out great, but it was time-consuming. It is going to take a few more hours to cut the remaining stiffeners to size and finish them.
