Finally started on the empennage over the last few days, starting with the rudder build. The rudder is fairly straight forward and the least expensive to screw up, multiple people advised me to start with it and go from there. Spent the last couple of days creating the rudder stiffeners, drilling the holes associated with the stiffeners and dimpling the stiffeners themselves. The rudder on the -8 is one piece of aluminum unlike the two piece version on the -7 so it makes it a bit more difficult to dimple since you have to manipulate the whole piece instead of one side at a time on the RV-7. With all of the stiffeners created, one got away from me on the deburring wheel and I rounded it off just a bit too much leaving not enough material on the nose of the stiffener to work with, that would crack in a few flights if it was left that way. So my first screw up and a quick order to Van's for the replacement part. One nice thing about Van's kits is that you can literally order any part of your kit from them as a one off part. You have to know where to look on their website but you can order the exact part that you need which is very reassuring when you screw something up. So lesson learned on that one. New part will be here in a few days. With all but one of the stiffeners formed, drilled and dimpled, it is time to dimple the skin on the rudder. To accomplish this I realized that my DRDT2 dimpler was not in a location that would allow me to work with large pieces like this. Having to dimple a piece this size with a hand or pneumatic squeezer would take a lot more time not to mention that it would be nearly impossible due to the distance between the edge of the material and the hole location. After finishing with all the stiffeners, I created a table top setup for the dimpler along with a supporting table to be able to handle a large piece such as the rudder. Nothing is difficult to do, it is just time consuming. Build on!