Title: Riveting together the rudder
This was a pretty long and productive session, starting with using blind rivets to attach the two halves of the rudder skins and reaching in between them to access the mating holes. I also cleaned the trailing edge with isopropyl alcolohol and then applied VHB tape to secure the trailing edge extrusion onto one side of the skins, holding it in place with clecos. Once the two skins were riveted together, I inserted the rudder skeleton into the skin and started clecoing it together too. The splice strips and rudder horn at the bottom rudder needed to riveted with a combination of blind and solid rivets, the latter of which sometimes required me to switch to different yokes multiple times in order to access all of them. Fortunately I was able to use my hand squeezer on all of the solid rivets without any major problems. The next task was to rivet in the counter-weight rib on the top edge of the rudder. At this point I realized that I had missed dimpling the handful of rivet holes that are forward face of the rudder where the two narrow strips of the rudder skins overlap with each other. Luckly, I was able to dimple these two skins together in place using my hand squeezer, and then finish riveting this counterweight rib in. What's next? The lead counter-weight needs to be installed permanently, and then last few rivets (mostly along the spar flange and the trailing edge) need to be squeezed.


NOTE: This information is strictly used for the EAA Builders Log project within the EAA organization.     -     Policy     -     © Copyright 2024 Brevard Web Pro, Inc.