2004-10-07
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I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what the instructions were calling out when it came to cutting the stiffeners. After a few "Ah-HA's" followed by "no, that's not it" it finally got into my head what they were talking about. It may be perfectly clear to you, but I'm spelling it out anyway. What they want you to do is basically connect the center of the dots. (ignoring the rivet holes) So if you start with one of the stiffeners and find the end that looks like this:

You draw a line using a BLUE sharpie. Why blue? Because up to now you've been using the two black sharpies that came in your tool kit and they're both lost. That's why. So first, draw a line from the edge of the oval shaped hole to the center of the notch.

Then flip the part over and draw a line from the notch located in the oval to the other side. Remember the draw the line so that it would pass through the centers of these notches.

Now go to the middle of the part and find the notch that's about 6 inches away from the middle oval shaped hole. (red arrow) and connect it to the notch in the center of the oval (yellow arrow)

Drawing the line

Now flip it over again and connect the edge of the center oval with the right hand notch of the group of two notches:

Thusly. Then draw a line from the other edge of the oval to the left hand notch.

Flip it over again and connect the other notch from the oval with the notch on the side.

The go to the unfinished end and draw the straight line from the edge of the oval to the notch.

Flip it over once again and find the notch about 6 inches away.

Again, connect this with the notch in the center oval.

I see a lot of people cutting these with a bandsaw and finishing them with a disk sander. This is a good way to go. I do not have these things so I will use the snips and finish them off with a file.

Snipping the tapered end

Here they are, all cut. Now I have to fix the length. These get shorted by one hole as they go up.

Here they are all shortened. They say to match the stiffeners with the holes on the rudder. If you do that you won't go wrong.