rv7quest: March 2012

With the elevators and rudder complete except for the leading edges, I went ahead and finished the vertical stabilizer. Jim and I set the internal rivets with rivet gun and bucking bar, and I finished the perimeter rivets with the hand squeezer. No surprises here - everything was fairly straight forward. There are a couple of rivets along the rear spar that are difficult to squeeze since they are located right next to the hinge brackets, but the no hole yoke worked pretty well in those areas. Once everything was finished, I removed the blue vinyl and hung the completed stabilizer from the ceiling.

Hand squeezing perimeter rivets

Vertical stabilizer finished - ready to hang next to the horizontal stab

Ready for storage

This weekend I made good progress on the rudder. I notched the counterweight to fit between the rivets in the counterbalance rib, and torqued the #10 screws after the weight was in place. All of the perimeter rivets were then set, with the exception of the trailing edge (and a few in the top and bottom ribs for trailing edge access). I've been doing some reading about the best method to tackle the trailing edge, and decided to use Proseal to keep the skins attached to the AEX wedge and keep everything straight during riveting. I allowed the Proseal to cure for nearly a full week, as it has been pretty cool in the hangar, which likely increased the cure time.

I used one of the rudder skins prior to final assembly to match drill the trailing edge holes in a piece of angle aluminum. That piece of angle was then clamped to a second piece, onto which the holes were transferred. That allowed me to clamp the trailing edge together after the Proseal was applied to the AEX wedge until the curing finished, keeping everything straight. I have to say I was more concerned about messing up the trailing edge than I was bending the ends of the trim tab, which gives many people trouble. I looked at several examples and spoke with several accomplished builders, and decided to squeeze all of the rivets rather than use the back rivet technique. I felt that backriveting left too much room for error, and that I could control how much the rivets were driven more effectively with a hand squeezer. This was the method I used:

Numbered the trailing edge holes 1-6, then repeated the pattern down the entire trailing edge. I used these numbers to set the rivets in a systematic pattern to prevent warping.
Starting in the middle and working to one side, I set all of the number 6 rivets half way, then repeated the process in the opposite direction.
Repeated this process for all number 5 rivets, and so on, until all of the rivets were set half way.
I then took a flat set I had ground down on my Scotchbrite wheel to match the angle of the trailing edge, and set the rivets the rest of the way, using the same pattern as before. I constantly checked to make sure no warping was taking place.

This process resulted in a nice straight trailing edge with no dings in the skin. I'm very pleased with the results, and happy this portion of the rudder is complete.