2004-11-13


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Finally, I have a day that I can work on the plane. Today the plan is to proseal the rudder trailing edge and/or prime the elevator stiffeners. One quick check of the weather confimed that I wasn't going to do any priming today. It's only 31° outside. 

So Proseal it is. First I have to get back into rudder mode, Let's see... How does this thing work again?
Oh yeah, Cleco the skins on and then start riveting. Most of the rivets can be reached with the squeezer. If I had a 4" yoke on the squeezer instead of the puny 3" one that I have I could have reached them all. It didn't matter much. Liz and I shot the ones I couldn't squeeze.
Skin to Spar, piece of cake. The only rivets I put in where the ones that go into the R-902 spar. I left them out of the ribs for now since I want to be able to separate the trailing edge to put the proseal in.
Now for the infamous trailing edge. The instructions say that you can proseal it and clamp it down to an aluminum angle to keep it straight. First I wanted to see how bad it was so I put a cleco in every other hole.
Yeah, kinda bends down in the middle a bit. Time to go to the po.. (Home Depot)
Back from Home Depot, this is all you need, $3.48
I need to match-drill the aluminum angle with the rudder skin so I start by clamping the angle to the rudder. 
Drill out every 4th hole and cleco, then the clamps can be removed.
Molly wanted to try her hand at installing clecos. 
After every 4th hole was done with a cleco installed, I went back and drilled every hole. Then the clecos were removed and I had to debur the holes. The drill left quite a few burs around each hole. I think this is because the $20 electric drill that I use goes too slow. I need to get a faster drill. A friend of mine who has built many planes (his last being an RV8) recommends that I get the Sioux 1412 1/4" air drill. 3600 RPM, faster drilling, rounder holes, drills last longer. I'll definitely get one before I do the wings.
Ahh, yes. Much better. Nice and straight, Time to Proseal.
I got the tube from Van's to do the trailing edge. You inject the dark goo from the middle into the tube and ram the thing in and out 50 times.

Yeah, that's a lousy description of how to do it. But if you buy a tube and read the directions, you'll know exactly what I mean.
Once it's all mixed, you replace the mixing thing with a plastic nozzle and start cake-decorating.
It was pretty hard to push the stuff out of the tube, so I had this 1 1/2" dowel that I stuck into the end and used my armpit to push with.
That worked pretty well. I reinstalled the trailing edge strip and put the goop on top of it.
Then I shoved the whole thing together and stuck a cleco in it. I placed the correct hole in the angle under the cleco and clamped it in place.
Then, to make sure it was clamped with the maximum force, I put a cleco in every hole.
Wipe off the goo that squeezes out of the edge and you're done.
Now I installed the rivets along the ribs. I started with the ones that go right thru the R-904 rib and into the R-710 horn brace. You can squeeze these but you have to be careful that you don't bugger up the hole in  R-710. When you close up the squeezer, the yoke could come in contact with the edge of the hole. (real bad picture here)
You can sort of see that as I close up the squeezer, the yoke gets close to the edge. If you really crank on the squeezer, you will damage the edge if the hole.

It was nice getting some real work done toady. I now need to wait two days for the proseal to harden before I can rivet the trailing edge. Then the rudder will be done. I hope tomorrow is a bit warmer. I want to get those parts primed...