2.0 Hours -
My Dad came over to help work on the plane today. I had him work to finish the right elevator skin while I worked to assemble the right elevator skeleton.
On the skin, my Dad started by deburring all the remaining holes that will be used to attach the skin to the skeleton. Then, he dimpled them with the pneumatic squeezer. Finally, he finished the edges with the vixen file and dove tail deburr tool. Once he finished this, I did a final edge finish with the Scotch-Brite wheel. Once the skin was prepped, it was scuffed, cleaned, primed, and set aside for assembly.
My Dad finished the elevator skin while I worked on the skeleton.
My Dad looked a little awkward with the squeezer at first, but quickly got the hang of dimpling.
With my Dad working away on the skin, I kept busy doing final assembly of the skeleton. I started by riveting the E-703 end rib to the E-704 counterbalance rib.
E-703 and E-704 riveted together before attaching to the spar.
Next, I riveted the two reinforcement plates and nutplates to the spar.
One of the spar reinforcement plates and nutplate attached.
The E-709 root rib was next to go on. This rib is attached with flush rivets so that the control horn can also be mounted flush to the spar flange. At first, I was a bit surprised that this rib is attached with 3-3.5 rivets when all of the other rib to spar attachments are done with 4- rivets. However, I then realized that this will be reinforced with the elevator horn, which will be attached to both the rib and spar with the larger 4- rivets.
The end rib (E-709) is flush riveted to the spar to allow for the elevator horn to also be flush with the spar.
The end/counterweight assembly was then riveted to the spar. This wasn’t complicated, but it took a couple of attempts to figure out the best way to squeeze the squeezer into position.
Finally, I riveted the elevator control horn (WD-605-1-R) to the spar and root rib. This piece didn’t seem to want to line up correctly at first, but once a few clecos were in, everything started to fit properly.
The right skeleton is fully assembled.
