Apr 02, 2024     Workshop Ongoing       Category: Workshop

So, workshop build is still ongoing, but (despite the picture showing an absolute carnage of mess) things are getting closer. I've got the parking bay (where that pesky boat will move forward into) walls sealed and concrete densified and sealed, as well as the studio all up and running for Amy. Remaining (major) things:
1. Seal walls of the shop area
2. Densify and seal concrete floors of shop area (probably gonna have to do this in two chunks, but we'll see how it goes).
3. Finish installing remaining 3 light fixtures, finish electric outlets in shop area
4. Move in the airplane parts
5. Continue building the plane
6. Engineer clever storage mechanism for future completed plane parts

For those interested, some products used:
-Wall sealer: General Finishes Gloss and Flat - We've been using a roller to apply this, we do a gloss coat first and then the flat-coat after. It's been a great product so far, goes on nicely, isn't much more expensive than the big-box store poly products and the performance is MUCH better (less drips, less entrained air bubbles, etc.)
-Concrete Densifier and Sealer: Using two products here, Ghostshield Lithi-tek 4500 (this is the densifier, I'm using it at half strength and applying with a low-pressure sprayer). Since this is slab on grade, the densifier should help a bit with potential freeze/thaw issues as well as getting a bit of additional hardness into the concrete. After 24hrs, I then apply two wet-on-wet coats coats of Ghostshield Siloxa-tek 8510 - let that dry down for an hour or so, and then wipe up any remaining wet product. The Siloxa-tek product is solvent-based and provides oil and water resistance. So far, it's been high-performing on the floors I've completed, but time will tell as to it's durability (but so far, the water is beading up as though it was a freshly waxed car - so that's a good sign). The other plus with this sealer (at least for me) is that it has zero surface modification (so no gloss, no loss in traction, etc).

  Feb 01, 2024     Barn is getting really close to finished       Category: Workshop

Been a while since I've been working on the airplane…but…good news, solid progress has been made in barn-land. It's all under roof, HVAC is up and running, plumbing is running, and the electric finish out is under way. Probably a couple more months and the space will be finished and ready for plane building again

  Nov 29, 2023     No -10 build progress, but the barn progress continues Category: Workshop

Barn is moving along nicely, we're all built at this point, fully insulated, and have electric service to the barn. Amy and I are now working on running all of the electric, building the interior walls, running HVAC, etc.

  Oct 14, 2023     Laser Cut Parts Inventory and Inspection - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

With the updated Vans documentation on the laser cut parts, I went and dug out all of the various Wing parts and inspected those that were on 'the list'. And, thankfully, my kit was minimally impacted. As my Tail Kit was shipped on 4/6/21 and the first instance (documented, at least) of LCPs was 2/16/22, none of my empennage kit was impacted (which made that inventory really easy - and thankfully so, as most of my empennage is now assembled and I didn't think to take pictures of each part prior to working with it (maybe I should for the future parts)?

For the Wings, I discovered that I have the following parts of my Wing kit as LCP (laser cut parts):
W-1006F
T-1002
T-1005BC
A-710
W-1009-L/R-3

And, even luckier, of all those parts, only one is in the 'yellow' category (category key below), the only impacted part is W-1006F.

So, I'll consider myself quite lucky that I've been building slowly (helps to identify parts easier), and that I was minimally impacted.

Categories:
Red: Replacement Recommended
Yellow: Replacement Recommended
Blue: Acceptable for Use
Green: Acceptable for Use

  Oct 14, 2023     Well, we finally decided to build the barn       Category: Workshop

After years of talking about it, Amy and I finally made the decision to build a hobby barn for the both of us! This will get me much more space to spread out with the plane build (though it will slow progress for a while here as the barn is being built), and gives us the chance to make Amy a dedicated studio space for her hobbies too! More to come, but build progress will slow for a bit (which, is probably OK as I'm getting dangerously close to the Laser Cut Parts portion of my Wing kit)

  Sep 17, 2023     Deburring of tailcone continues - (1.5 hours) Category: Empennage

Deburred the longerons and a few of the J-channels. Longerons just need hole and the end of the L-stock deburred, the J-channel takes longer as I have to edge and hole debur it.

Was going to break up the monotony of deburring by shooting some primer today, but it ended up getting a tad too windy (luckily I realized that before I acid-etched everything)...oh well, maybe next time.

  Sep 16, 2023     Deburring Tailcone - (2.7 hours) Category: Empennage

Well, these are going to be pretty boring updates for a while - lots of deburring to do. Did most of the bulkheads and small-parts of the tailcone in this session; that leaves the hole and edge deburring of the stiffeners, hole deburring of the longerons, and then the hole deburring of all the skins.

  Sep 09, 2023     Tailcone disassembled - (1.5 hours) Category: Empennage

And just like that, the tailcone is back into a collection of all the parts. And now the deburring begins... So much deburring...

  Sep 08, 2023     Tailcone finalization before disassembly - (0.5 hour) Category: Empennage

Took care of the last couple of things on the tailcone - fitting and final drilling the access cover plates, and double checking before I start disassembling it

  Sep 04, 2023     Tailcone - nearing the finish of assembly round 1 - (1.5 hours)       Category: Empennage

Worked on finishing up some of the tailcone assembly items - clamped and drilled in the HS stabilizer piece as well as the elevator stop piece as well. Was thankful for my close-quarter angle-drill to get the #12 bit close enough to drill out the couple of end holes up against the vertical metal pieces for the HS.

After that, I removed the two top skins, then deburred and cleaned up the two rear seat-belt attach points, and then drilled those in with the #12 bit (also, finally had a use for the chunky clecos to hold those in position).

Just a few more things and then I have to start taking this monster apart. Note to self - order a primer that has a color you won't mind seeing in your tailcone.

  Aug 28, 2023     Update later - refer to notes in build instructions - (.7 hour) Category: Empennage

  Aug 26, 2023     Drilled tail cone top skins and machined HS stiffeners - (2.5 hours)       Category: Empennage

Drilled all of the stiffeners on the remaining top skin, then final drilled both top skins across the bulkheads and side-skins/longerons. I still have the single tab on the 2nd the last bulkhead that is out of alignment, will fix that once I disassemble this all.

After that, I fired up my ‘machinist' skills (read: any proper machinist would and should be appalled by my methods, skill, and technique), and made the couple of stiffeners from the .125” 3/4 x 3/4 angle aluminum. I was happy with how they turned out (using the disc sander to sneak up to the lines after the really rough bandsaw cuts has been a game changer for accuracy). In other exciting news, I finally used the bandsaw for something more besides just a shelf! (Clamped a make-shift fence to keep all of the holes at the desired 15/32” from the back of the angle.

  Aug 23, 2023     2nd tailcone top skin attached - (1 hour) Category: Empennage

Finished drilling the last stiffener in the rear-ward top skin, then cleco'd in the forward most top skin.

  Aug 21, 2023     Skin deburring and first top skin of tailcone attach - (3.2 hours)       Category: Empennage

Went through and prepped the two tailcone skins (removed blue vinyl and deburred the edges). After that, I developed a newfound appreciation for the tailcone side panels and their pre-bent curve (vs. the fight of taking the flat top-skins and getting them to follow the curve of the bulkheads).

  Aug 05, 2023     Final drilled rest of tailcone - (1 hour) Category: Empennage

Final drilled the right side skins as well as the bottom skin - also final drilled the couple of 3/32” holes in the rear (F-1011/1012) spar webs.

Next up, attaching the top skin of the tailcone

  Jul 31, 2023     Final drilled left side skin - (.7 hour) Category: Empennage

Finished the final-drilling of the left side skin today after work. Now I just have the right side and the under skin to final drill.

  Jul 30, 2023     Drilling Right Longeron and Starting Final Drilling of the tailcone side and bottom skins - (1.5 hours)       Category: Empennage

Did a repeat of the left side longeron and drilled out the right side longeron, then did the match-drilling for the F-1012 (at the rear of the tailcone), and then started the longish job of moving clecos around whilst final drilling all of the holes in the skins. I didn't get too far, so I'm noting where I've been in my build instructions (essentially doing the rows [stiffeners] first and then I'll come back and do the columns [bulkheads] after.

  Jul 29, 2023     Drilling Left Longeron - (2 hours)       Category: Empennage

Did the setup on the back end of the tail (f-1014 deck piece and the associated shims and doubler plate). After that, I did the drilling of the left longeron - didn't have a 3/32" jobber so I just used a #41 and will final drill with the #40 per the plans.

  Jul 27, 2023     Tailcone parts machining and assembly - (2.5 hours)       Category: Empennage

While roasting coffee for the Pancake breakfast this upcoming Sunday, I got some work knocked out on the tailcone. Had some of the bellcrank angles to debur and assemble/final drill. Then machined a part from flat stock, something I used to really not enjoy but now I find it quite satisfying (it was a simple shim-ish part, I think) for the aft part of the tailcone. After that, I mounted the two angle pieces that I spent far too long bending earlier in the tailcone work - apparently all that effort paid off because they fit perfectly! (These are the aluminum angle pieces that run along the top of the side skins the entire length of the tailcone.

  Jul 26, 2023     Assembled more of the tailcone, work on parts - (1 hour) Category: Empennage

Fit and match-drilled the F-1008 bulkhead to the tailcone, and match-drilled to the bellcrank ribs. Also added the vertical support piece (forgot the part number) and then moved on to separating some of the parts (cutting, deburring, etc.) That was on the 1037 A, B, C parts (finished the two A's, need to do B and C still)

  Jul 23, 2023     Finished riveting one side of the VS - (3 hours)       Category: Empennage

Finished up the rivets on the Vertical Stabilizer (well, on one side sans the bottom-most rib which I need to remove when I do the other side). Leaving the other side open so we can review my work when my tech counselor comes out. Overall, riveting went pretty well, drilled out about 8-10 out of the 100 or so that I put in - most errors were on the bucking bar and rivet gun. I did check every rivet with the rivet-checker tool just to be sure, and also had to look up the Milspec tolerances for the AD3 rivets on the rear-spar where the spar-doublers are as the 4.5 length rivets needed to be set a bit deeper that normal (e.g. the shop head had a larger-than normal shop head diameter, but I had to do that to get to the correct max-length).

The most painful error was a dreaded ‘smiley' just off the leading edge of the VS. It was a tricky angle (inside) with the bucking bar to get it just right, and I was too focused on that visually and the rivet gun slipped up on the skin. Oh well - I'm painting this plane anyways, so it'll just get a bit of filler there and no one (except me and all of you) will ever be the wiser.

Only other item of note here is that I had some surface scratches from dimpling (early error, I was dragging the dimple die on the skin to find the hole…luckily I didn't make that error for long before realizing the damage it was doing). As such, I lightly ground the scratch down with gray scotchbrite to get to the base of the scratch.

  Jul 17, 2023     Attach the rudder stabilizer and did some Vertical Stabilizer rivets on the leading edge - (2.5 hours)       Category: Empennage

I machined the rudder stabilizer piece from the 3/4" angle aluminum, since it was 1/16" thick, I was able to rough cut it in the bandsaw and then use the angle-gauge on the sander to get the 1/8" offset (set the gauge to 9.5"). Worked a treat and got that piece all match-drilled in.

After that, I was nearly out of cleco's, so I ordered another 300 from Cleaveland tools, and then decided for a change of pace in the meantime, and broke out the Vertical stabilizer to start recapturing some clecos from it by riveting it closed (or at least closed on 1 side). Despite an annoying smiley I made on the leading edge of the VS, the riveting went decent - I still am a much bigger fan of squeezing rivets vs. the blind bucking bar method, but I'm slowly getting better at it.

  Jul 16, 2023     Tailcone left skin attach and J-channel drilling - (3 hours)       Category: Empennage

Attached the left side skin with the tailcone flipped up on the workbench - did all the drilling of the J-channels again (all 270 some odd holes), then got the rear compartment all figured out as well and started laying out the right-angle pieces.

Note to future self: upon disassembly, be sure to get the layering of the 4x aluminum piece overlap areas near the rear of the tailcone...

  Jul 10, 2023     Tailcone flip and rear bulkheads attach - (1 hour)       Category: Empennage

Finished drilling the remaining 1.7 J-channels on the Right-side skin (I have a sneaking suspicion I'm going to have to close up my vertical stab and/or horizontal stab to reclaim Clecos OR order more Clecos again). Regardless, got the Right skin all attached, then flipped the unit over (with some last minute help from Amy, otherwise things would've gotten interesting), then got the rear bottom skin portion and two bulkheads attached).

  Jul 08, 2023     Tailcone Right side skin attach and stiffener drilling - (1 hour) Category: Empennage

Title says it all - attached the right side tailskin after positioning the stiffeners, then started drilling all the holes (drill, cleco, drill, cleco)...Got a little under halfway done before I called it to go mow/work outside

  Jul 04, 2023     Tailcone bottom - initial assembly - (2.3 hours)       Category: Empennage

Spent some time messing around with getting the couple of tailcone parts all mated together and got the first 3 J-channels fed through and in position. Nothing like the satisfaction of seeing the end-lines perfectly line up with the holes.

Then I drilled to 1047-F (R and L) and the 1047-G - lots of holes and repetition. Drill, Cleco, Drill, Cleco, Drill, Cleco...you get the picture.

After that, I attached the F-1029 (Bellcrank ribs), drilled the 6 #30 holes, and then read ahead in the instructions to the next step (attaching J-channels to the side and attaching sideskin, and then much more J-channel drilling - and decided to call it a night now that it's (kinda) cooled down outside.

  Jun 13, 2023     J-channel marking and prep for initial tailcone assembly - (4 hours)       Category: Empennage

Used the handy-dandy line-marking jig I printed up last time - worked a treat to get quick lines on the bendy J-channels. Honestly spent a good amount of time just removing the blue vinyl from one side of the J-channels and the tailcone bottom skin. While moving pieces around I did manage to drop my 1-2-3 block on the bottom skin, so I have a lovely little dent to pound out a bit later (circled in blue to find later).

Even with the jig, it still took a little while to mark everything up, but got everything all marked up and then spent a bit of time making a couple of wooden ‘hoops' to serve as the sawhorse asked for in the manual (for now, I'll be working on the tailcone suspended above my workbench as most work is on the lower side of the tailcone while it's inverted).

  Jun 12, 2023     Finished cutting J-channels - (2 hours) Category: Empennage

Finished cutting the other 45 degree side of my J-channels (F-1047 A-G), then sanding the cut edges flat and double checking the final measurements - all we right on!). After that, I moved on to the longerons, which I can to trim up first (it's just .125 angle aluminum), so I trimmed and sanded the cut edges, then drilled the hole and cleaned the outer edges of it.

After that (and cleaning up all the aluminum shavings I made), I made a quick 3D model of a line-marking jig. For all of the F-1047 pieces, I need to be able to make a 5/16” line the entire length of the J-channel, given the flexibility of the material, that wasn't going to be fun. So a quick jig was imagined in CAD then 3D printed, I tested it on a bit of scrap and it works beautifully - will snag some pics of that next time.

  Jun 11, 2023     Fun with J-channels - (2 hours) Category: Empennage

Spent some time on marking out the various F-1047 J-channel lengths, then realized that my ability to cut a 45 degree miter on those wasn't going to be perfect… So I spent far too much time thinking about how to accomplish it on the bandsaw - once I realized I'd have to make a 3D printed jig to do it safely, I moved on to Plan B - chop saw at 45, sand the edge back to remove the knife-edge, then re-mark the lengths and repeat using the sander to bring it to final length.

Got the first side cuts all made, cleaned up, then re-marked all the J-channel for the next cuts which I'll do next I'm in the shop.

  Jun 04, 2023     Tailcone bulkhead deburring and match drilling - (3 hours)       Category: Empennage

Got the rest of the tailcone bulkheads all deburred and match drilled. Nothing too exciting here, just a bunch of time with the 3M wheels on the bench grinder and the 1” wheels in the angle grinder.

I also missed a couple of smaller work days from my previous post - those all amounted to about an hour, and it was just deburring the bulkheads.

On a random note, I've finally figured out a purpose for those larger 3d printed carabiners I made a while back

  May 10, 2023     Tailcone Work (pgs 10-3 and 10-4) - (1.5 hours)       Category: Empennage

Finished tapping the tiedown bracket after I received my plug tap in the mail. Finished attaching the elevator bracket to F-1011, drilling out the holes to 5/8” with the unibit, and then prepped some of the doubler plates and deburred the F-1010 Bulkhead.

Couple of pictures of the brackets/bulkheads that'll be near the end of the tailcone assembly.

  May 01, 2023     Tailcone initial assembly - (1 hour)       Category: Empennage

Spent some time straightening out the F-1011C (nothing like getting a bow out of 5mm thick aluminum). Then moved on to some of the assembly and drilling steps.

Pictures show the two pieces during straightening, one mid-way through and the other the final result. Instructions wanted a 1/16" maximum deviation and I got it down to 1/32" and called it good.

  Apr 30, 2023     Tapped the Tie Down Bracket - (0.2 hour) Category: Empennage

Got the 3/8-16 tap and tapped the tie down bracket. Annoyingly, the hole is 1 and 1/8" deep instead of the spec'd 1 1/4" (plus I neglected to pay full attention to the fact that I picked up a plug tap, and I'll likely want a bottom tap to complete that hole. (But, on the plus side, I didn't have to use a taper tap to start it - not that I knew I should've done that ahead of time - but hey, now I do!)

  Apr 29, 2023     Elevator Deburring complete - On to tailcone fabrication - (3.5 hours) Category: Empennage

Finished up deburring the final elevator skin - glad that's over. Forecast has a lot of wind for the foreseeable future, so instead of getting ready for primer on the elevator parts and skins, I moved on to the next section - the tailcone.

Like most sections, this one start out with some fabrication and part separation steps. After remembering the joys of swapping to my aluminum-specific blade on my miter saw (yes, I'm terrible at making cuts on my baby band-saw, so for straight cuts I use the miter and it works like a champ), I made the various cuts for the tie-down portion, as well as some of the angle pieces that needed to be fabricated.

I also realized that I didn't own a 3/8-16 tap, so a quick Amazon order and I should have that tomorrow to properly tap out the tie down bracket.

  Apr 25, 2023     More Elevator Skin Deburring - (1 hour) Category: Empennage

Got another two skins hole and edge deburred, 1 more to go and then it'll be on to masking up the parts that will get pro seal and prepping everything for priming!

  Apr 24, 2023     Elevator Deburring Continued - (1 hour) Category: Empennage

You guessed it, another night of deburring - finished up the E-913 bands and then moved on to the elevator skins. Got one whole skin all hole and edge deburred...Three more to go!

Technique notes:
1. Single flute cutter in electric screwdriver for hole debur - light pressure, 1.25ish revolutions/hole
2. 1" Polishing 3M wheel in angle grinder for the edges - I wear a few edge lines in each pad which makes it easy to run along the side of the skins.
3. I remove the outside edge-blue-vinyl when I do the deburring of skins, mainly because I know I'm going to paint/wrap this plane, and I can't stand the smell/added labor of burning off strips of the vinyl. To protect the skins, I make sure the table is blown-clean each time and I tend to use a moderate-thickness packing foam instead of putting the skin on the hard bench surface.

  Apr 23, 2023     Elevator deburring continues - (2.5 hours) Category: Empennage

So...much...deburring.... Got almost all of the elevator parts completed, just the skins remain!

  Apr 17, 2023     Deburring of Elevator Parts - (0.9 hour) Category: Empennage

Deburred the two longest spars of the elevator (edge deburred, lightening holes, and then all of the spar web and flange holes). There is no shortage of parts to debur this time around that's for sure.

Also designed and printed up some labels to hang on/near parts when I prime them - since I've had issues with my marking staying post-prep and post-prime, this should help with part identification and orientation at least.

  Apr 16, 2023     Elevator assembly and disassembly - (5 hours)       Category: Empennage

Solid day in the airplane factory today - finished assembling all of the left-side elevator now that I received that missing part from Vans. After going through all the assembly of the left, and (again) double checking to make sure I had the counterweight-side assembly corrected ordered with the top skins, and then drilling many, many holes (final size drilling), I disassembled both of the elevators in prep for deburring, then prime, then dimpling.

Couple of things I should note so that I don't forget in the future:
1. Left boxes in the instructions that I skipped (mainly just dimple-steps, since I prefer to do that and machine countersinks post-prime
2. I'll need to sand down the trailing edge wedge as I previously primed that and it's gonna get some pro seal.
3. I'll need to remember to mask the areas for the foam blocks so I don't prime that part of the skin.
4. Double check all of the parts and make sure I've labeled everything

  Apr 11, 2023     Right Elevator Top Skin Drilling - (0.3 hour)       Category: Empennage

Drilled out the first half of the holes on the top skin of the Right elevator, then moved all the clecos around so for my next session I'll be able to drill out the remaining holes on the top skin

  Apr 08, 2023     Right elevator top skin attach and trailing edge cut - (1.4 hours) Category: Empennage

Assembled the right-side elevator while waiting for the part for my left-side elevator to come in. Had some struggles with the orientation of the layers where the spars, ribs, and counterweight assembly all join, but got it all sorted out. Vans really does give you just enough of that trailing edge, the exact amount of rivets are available for the two elevators.

Also did a quick Cleaveland order - picked up a couple hundred more clecos as I'm running low with the VS, HS, and Elevators chewing up the majority of my clecos - will need to get Tom out here soon to take a look at my work so I can get those parts all finalized and closed up.

  Apr 06, 2023     Quick drilling on the Elevator, assembly and looking for parts - (1 hour) Category: Empennage

Had a few minutes so I drilled out the spar and rib connection points (Step #3 on 9-7, but don't quote me on the page number). Basically, the holes common to E-1002,1007, 1008, and 905.

Later, I moved on to looking for the E-615 trim access mounting plate...Long story short, I realized that I mistakenly inventoried one of the E-616PP as E-615PP...$13 part ordered from Vans, should be here in a couple weeks. Continued on the right side elevator with getting it's mounting plate in.

  Apr 04, 2023     Elevator Deburring and Assembly - (0.3 hour) Category: Empennage

Realized I forgot the whole part about attaching the E-1007 Rear spar to the elevators, so I dug that part out and deburred it's edges (three cheers to the 1" scotchbrite wheel in my die grinder, life-saver on long pieces that are hard to hit with my big scotchbrite wheels in the grinder).

Got that all deburred and clecoed into the skins and ribs - next up... lots of drilling.

  Apr 03, 2023     Elevator Assembly - (.7 hour)       Category: Empennage

Dug through my part shelves, found, then deburred the outboard ribs for the elevator (E-1005, I believe). After that, I then clecoed all of the elevator ribs (A-P) to the elevator spar for both the Left and Right side.

  Apr 02, 2023     Elevators - Some drilling and assembly - (0.5 hour) Category: Empennage

While the dogs were outside playing today, it was (finally) nice enough to open the garage door and work on the plane while they were enjoying the beautiful day.

Drilled out the plates on the elevator spars and deburred those 4 parts completely. After that, I drilled the 5/8” hole in each elevator spar, then cleaned up the mess the UniBit always leaves, and clecoed the elevators together.

  Mar 21, 2023     Quick work on the elevators - (0.3 hour) Category: Empennage

Finished pulling off the blue vinyl from the interior of the skins, hunted down the four E-910 plates from the storage shelves, deburred those plates, and marked and cleco'd them into the spar.

  Mar 18, 2023     Done with HS for now, moving on to Elevators - (2 hours)       Category: Empennage

I clecoed up the HS inner structure to the skins so that I could easily clear it off of my workbench in preparation for moving on to the elevators. I'm moving to the elevators as I'm likely at the step on the HS where I should have my technical advisor inspect it before I finish closing it all up.

On the elevators, I finished up the rib drilling step on the 903/904/913 assemblies; this is where I left off a few months ago when I had the discovered the stress crack on the flange of one of my 904 parts and had to email builder support on it. After drilling those holes out, I left those assemblies connected, and moved on to the elevator skins.

The 4 elevator skins each have a small tab that has to be bent 90 degrees - when reading about this step it had me a bit worried (I didn't want to mess up a skin and have to order another). I took my time and set up the bend per the instructions, and it actually worked out great. For those that are struggling to understand the challenge here, the fold is a triangle shaped piece, so there's a bit of a challenge in getting the tab to fold nicely without introducing issues to it. However, the block of wood to start the bend followed by some light rivet gun taps with the flush mount set did the trick.

Finished up the day by removing most of the blue vinyl from the interiors of all the elevator skins.

  Mar 11, 2023     HS Nose Ribs Riveting Complete - (1.2 hours)       Category: Empennage

Finished up riveting all of the HS-905 Nose Ribs to the skins, I'm sure I'll look back at this someday and be amazed at how long it took me to shoot 78 rivets. Thankfully, I was able to notice an improvement over time, and I only had to drill out 1 rivet on the 2nd skin (vs. like 4-6 on the first one).

Now I have to figure out how far I want to go with closing this up prior to having my technical counselor swing by for a visit…. Will read ahead a bit on instructions and see how much more I have to do on the HS and decide if I want to move ahead and rivet a bit more OR move on to the elevators.

  Mar 07, 2023     HS Riveting Continues - (1 hour)       Category: Empennage

Just setting nose ribs into the HS skins - this will continue for a little while, despite there only being 10 rivets/rib and there being 8 total ribs...I'm taking my time and trying to minimize any potential for damage as I'm doing this (last thing I want is a nasty dent on my horizontal stabilizer).

Finished up one side tonight, 1 more side to go. I'm gradually getting better (thank goodness), I did end up having to drill out 5 or 6 rivets on the first one, in most cases because my rib flange wasn't perfectly pressed up against the mating surface (in most cases, it was near the front on the leading edge where there's a lot of bend and stress on the metal). I learned that if I move the cradle closer to where I'm riveting, I get slightly more contact and pressure on the rib which was helpful. Also, my slowness helped here, as drilling out a rivet trapped between two pieces of metal isn't awesome - thankfully when that happened I noticed it pretty quickly and it came out without too much trouble.

  Mar 06, 2023     Quick rivets - (0.2 hour)       Category: Empennage

Just setting some rivets in the nose ribs

  Mar 05, 2023     Dimpling and (Finally) some rivets in the HS (namely, nose ribs and skin) - (4.5 hours)       Category: Empennage

Finished up the dimples on the horizontal skin, and then did some quick orienting of all the parts and assemblies to make sure I had the correct HS skins in the right place (thankfully, this is a relatively easy task given the few holes you leave 'open' and the fact that the skins are directional after that).

After that, I riveted the spars to the inspar ribs, giving me my initial interior support assembly. Once I had completed that step, I moved along to taking the nose ribs and cleco-ing them deep down in the Horizontal Stabilizer skin (future me is laughing at this post since this is gonna get real fun on the wings...) Once I had that all assembled, I refreshed myself with some practice flush rivets with the rivet gun and bucking bar (as it's been a while since I've had to do any of that). Once I had reminded myself of just how slow I am, I moved on to riveting in the nose ribs (there may have been a few minutes of deep consultation with the manual to make sure I wasn't making some procedural error in attaching all the nose rivets - and there wasn't). Got a few rivets in the nose ribs then called it a day.

  Mar 04, 2023     HS Skin Dimples - (1 hour)       Category: Empennage

Had a quick hour today so I started on the 2nd horizontal stabilizer skin with prepping it for assembly (that's right, that means dimples). Did the quick debur of all the holes on the front side, then proceeded to do all of the dimples on one side, and knocked out all of the squeezed dimples on the other side (which leaves me with the DRDT2 and close-quarters dimples next I'm in the shop).

And in case any are curious, I did all of the dimples I could reach with the squeezer (because it's the easiest and fastest), then all of the inners I did on the DRDT2, followed by the two holes on each of the inner nose-ribs that required the close-quarters dimple die set.

Ah yes - trivia time - there are (by my count) 490 holes in each of the skins, so 980 holes in total on the Horizontal stabilizer...so many future rivets

  Feb 26, 2023     Dimpling of the Horizontal Stabilizer - (3.5 hours)       Category: Empennage

Worked on dimpling all the things on the Horizontal Stabilizer - got all the ribs and nose ribs dimpled with the sub-structure dimples from Cleaveland. (And after looking up some part numbers online, I see they no longer make the sub-structure or tank dies, so I'm glad I have my collectors set!). Got one of the skins all dimpled - I had to first debur the outside of it (I hadn't done that prior to priming as the film was on, which was removed during priming. After that, I had to re-teach myself the tricks of dimpling. Couple of things, avoid the male die on the bottom of the DRDT2, less you want micro-scratches all over the skins. Also, flipping the skins primer side down on the table works very well (the first time I had primer up, which meant I was fighting with the handle having clearance the whole time.

After that, I just had 8 total holes for the four forward-most holes of the leading edge of the horizontal stabilizer where I couldn't reasonably get the DRDT in there. Thankfully, I had my close-quarters dimples on hand, so I pulled those and used the combo of copper mandel to set the initial dimple, and then the steel nail to get the dimple all the way set (taking care not to over do it like I did on the first set where I pulled the nail clean through the dimple).

Just have the other skin to do (deburring the outside and then dimpling), then I'll be on to assembling the horizontal stabilizer frame and everything.

  Feb 25, 2023     Machine Countersinks…598 of them - (2.5 hours)       Category: Empennage

Had to do all of the machine counter-sinks (MSC) on the front and rear spars of the horizontal stabilizer, which I hadn't done ahead of priming. In hindsight, and for the future, for these MCS types, I can actually do them prior to priming, since these are counter-sunk for the skin to mate against (e.g. less dimensionally critical than if a rivet were fitting flush in there on a visible surface. Did the two spars (HS-1003 and HS-1007) assemblies, and then did the stringers as well for a grand total of 598 MCS.

Also, I remembered to re-read the instructions in Section 5 this time around, and picked up the tip that you can set the cage to the correct depth for a rivet, then move it 7 clicks (in my case, 8-9 was right on the money) to get to the thickness of the skin and it fit just right. A tip I learned that wasn't in the instructions, drill horizontal (parallel to the floor), the spars are more stable and it's a tad bit more ergonomic.

  Feb 19, 2023     Horizontal Spar Assembly Construction - (2.5 hours)       Category: Empennage

Clecoed together HS-1013 (spar stiffeners), HS 1002 (spar), HS 1007 (doubler) HS 1008 L/R (brackets). Followed the variety of rivet sizes in the instructions and mated the spar doubler and brackets together.

On the AN470ad4-10 rivets in 1008, the shop heads weren't meeting the rivet checker diameter, but i double checked MIL-R-47196A in Section 5-04, my driven head thickness was around .058”, min is .050 and max is .070 - so they were all good to go. Finished all the rivets on 8-6 steps 1 and 2.

I did choose to drill out two rivets, I should've re-read Section 5, since (like an idiot), I took a #34 drill and attempted to drill out the whole rivet, and went slightly crooked near the end - so I slightly oblonged one hole in 1008-L, after a few choice words and a moment to cool off, I removed the 2nd problematic rivet with a #30 drill as I was supposed to, and it worked a treat. (BTW - these two rivets both had issues because they were in the mid-line-middle of the bracket, my squeezer didn't quite fit in the area, but you couldn't find that out until the pressure squared the two sets together. After drilling the rivets out, I bucked the new ones in. I chose to email builder support on the topic of the oblonged hole (unsure if I should leave it, size up to AD5, or what). They (rightfully and very professionally) reminded me to read Section 5 and not drill rivets out like an idiot. The remedy was to over-set the problematic rivet to further fill the oblong hole, which worked out well. (The picture below is of the problematic hole BEFORE I drove the rivet further)

Also, a reminder for future-self, the primer covers marks, need to get a better system for marking/tracking parts during priming activities. I think I may re-mark after I do the scuffing of the materials next time (plus the added surge tank should also help with some of the overspray problems I had last time I primed)

  Jan 15, 2023     Finally, some rivets! - (3 hours)       Category: Empennage

Well, that was a bit of a break from the project - glad to have ended that streak and get back in the Airplane Factory! Before I could get to work today, I had to clean-up and reset the airplane factory (it had turned into a storage room during the holidays). Didn't count any of the clean-up time in the log, but did include a few pics.

Alright, onto the exciting parts - my last work on the plane was shooting a bunch of primer, with that complete I could start assembling the horizontal stabilizer! After re-leveling my workbenches (and ordering some better leveling feet since I'm quite tired of the shims and lifting the tables manually to get it just right), I started back at page 8-2, which involved riveting the rear spar doubler to the rear spar. Started by clecoing everything back together and then test-fit a few rivets - doh! Got too much primer in the holes in a few places, so I reamed all the holes (again), cleaned up the two pieces by disassembling, and then reassembled them back together. Once I was ready to set the rivets, I initially got out the rivet gun - it's been so long since I've set a rivet that I almost forgot that the squeezer was the right tool for the job here! I oiled the gun for good measure and put it back into storage.

After a couple of test rivets on scrap, I was ready and set the 36 rivets on the doubler and then the subsequent 32 rivets on the hinge brackets (that pneumatic squeezer is worth it's weight in gold). I was pleasantly surprised that my machine countersunk holes on the doubler set perfectly and didn't need to be cleaned up from the primer. After all the rivets were set, I just had the flange bearing to attach (which is bolted on). After hunting through my (well-organized) part bins, I finally found all of the parts I need, dutifully looked up the torque specs for the nuts/bolts I was using (20-25 in-lbs), and measured the friction torque I was experiencing on the locking nuts (9 in-lbs). As such, I tightened all the nuts down to 34 in-lbs, and then applied torque seal to commemorate the occasion (and, remind future-me that I had indeed torqued down those nuts accordingly.

That was it for the day, I have a delightfully assembled rear spar now - next time I'll be onto the other spar assembly, so much of the same (though I suspect I'll move a bit quicker since I have everything remembered again).

  Oct 09, 2022     Priming...at long last - (4 hours)       Category: Empennage

For those following along - you'll recall that I last sprayed primer about (or more than) a year ago - it sprayed great, is super durable, and is super toxic (first time around I did Azko)... I love the end result, but I really hated the process, the positive pressure ventilation is necessary and a hassle to work with and setup/clean - and because of that hassle, I would work on part up until the priming step and then set them aside and continue on to the next section. So this weekend, I figured I'd try something else and I figured I'd give a try with Stewart Systems Ekoprime product.

On the pros - it's WAY less toxic, it's water-based, there's no two-part mixing and initial set-up, and did I mention it's way less toxic? On the cons - I expect durability to be a bit lower (though, the durability portion is really only a during-construction issue EXCEPT in the area of potential solvents...looking at you AVGAS - which will easily take the primer up in the future).

So with my baby-sized can of Ekoprime in hand, I set about the business of priming - gathered a bunch of parts (classically, I forgot a bunch of stiffeners, so another priming day is in my very-near future), and started the priming process, summarized below:
1. Clean part with Prekote - spray part, scrub lightly with gray scotchbrite, rinse thoroughly with water, let air dry.
2. Set up spray table, get all the equipment set up and ready for spraying (taking care to avoid touching parts with bare hands)
3. Mix up Ekoprime (so glad I grabbed a paint mixer for the drill on a whim, it's a necessary thing for this)
4. Measure into 3M PPS cup (I did 250ml of primer and about 20ml of water), mix again.
5. Spray parts with Orange (1.4mm) nozzle (instructions want two coats, but I sprayed heavy-enough that it really only needed 1 coat)
6. Let dry
7. Clean up

Couple pertinent notes:
1. This primer is much more prone to drying on the spray nozzle vs. Azko... Easily remedied via paper towel and blotting the tip.
2. I may need a different air source (or buffer mine with a tank) if I ever consider spraying more than primer - my 30gal single stage compressor got a workout during that spray session
3. The primer sprays...ugly...it's probably me and a bad setup, the paint is going down with a certain 'fleck' like appearance (almost like part of it is dry by the time it hits the surface). However, it flows once it's on the part pretty reliably - especially when the whole tip-gunk problem is noticed and cleaned.

Overall - I am quite pleased with the primer so far - too soon to call on the durability - but spray day was about 10x better than with the Azko as I only needed eye/respiratory protection and given the low-VOC and EPA-rating of this product, it's not much more dangerous than standard house paint. The green color is more limey- than the standard Azko, but hey - we're talking about the inside of parts here...

Lessons for next time:
0. Remember that sharpie may not bleed through this primer as easily, parts need to be remarked AFTER PreKote and probably after the tack coat (Or, do smaller batches and relabel as the paint dries)
1. Try to follow the instructions and attempt the light tack-coat first, that might help my crappy spray experience.
2. re-read up on pressure settings for the spray gun (inlet rec. is 20psi), avoid using the long and thin extension hose as the primary air supply to avoid the whole surging issue. I think I was spraying at WAY too high of a pressure.
3. Remember the top knob is the fan control knob to adjust spray pattern.
4. Remember a piece of scrap/cardboard to dial in the darn gun first

  Aug 30, 2022     Work on the E-903/904 assembly (elevators) - (1.5 hours)       Category: Empennage

Picked back up on page 9-2, namely on drilling out the E-904/903/913 cleco'd up assembly. As I was finishing the first one's #30 and #12 holes, I saw a stress crack along the E-904 part, at the front (non-pointy) end where I had fluted the material. Long story short, I sent a note to Van's builder support to see if this gets a ‘drill it out and build on' or a ‘better order your first replacement parts' verdict. If I'm placing bets here, I'm guessing it's a ‘order the part', but we'll see.

This was from the part that I received with my empennage order that was somewhat suspiciously already out of it's blue vinyl, had been dimpled already and everything - so it had the look of a training part at the factory (or elsewhere), but my inspection showed the part to be good so I accepted it.

Aside from that, I found the E-1002 Shear Clips in near record time along my wall of parts, and cut those out and deburred the edges and final drilled the shorter flange side of the clips. Man, the scotchbrite wheels are a dream for edge deburring.

After that, I hunted the Elevator Skins, which took more like 10 minutes, as I had the top skins in one place and the bottom skins in another (makes total sense, right?). I'm sure it had nothing to do with the sorting of parts that occurred when I received the wing kit and my bad sorting habits from the empennage original unboxing.

I then started to muster the courage for bending the close-out tab on the elevator, didn't quite get to the step tonight - but I'm feeling more confident about it now at least. I may still take a piece of scrap and practice this one first…. (Since there is a step where you're using the flush rivet set on low power to properly bend the close out tab).

Update: Just chatted with Kevin from Van's Builder Support - Verdict here: Build On! Kevin offered an optional step here as well, which is to apply a small amount of Proseal around the affected area (essentially the back of the 903/904 assemblies where they mate up against the 913). Since I'm priming, I'll want to leave that area unprimed (so note to future-self, mask the bonding area so I can get the ProSeal to play nicely). Double-bonus: This will/could end up being a solid 'ProSeal practice' before things get crazy with fuel tanks.

  Jul 23, 2022     Building E-903 and E-903 and E-913 - (1.5 hours) Category: Empennage

Did some work on prepping the elevator end ribs, which was a little trickier than most (I suspect, at least) in my case. For whatever reason, my E-903 and E-904 parts appeared to have been already worked…they had been crimped a bit already, had some dimples set, and were quite scratched up (came with no blue film either).

I spent a good amount of time getting everything to 90 degrees and then fitting with E-913. Got everything fitting (finally) and cleco'd up

  Jul 13, 2022     Elevator Rib Drilling - (1 hour)       Category: Empennage

Had to get in the shop and blow off some, well, aluminum shavings - it had been way too long since I've been working on the plane. [Good reasons - been busy enjoying the summer and I've been training for the upcoming Pelotonia ride (my first one - 102 miles!] Felt good to get back in the workshop and even get just a little bit done.

Finished up all of the final deburring and final drilling of the ribs, and then dug out the next steps parts (e-903/904/913). I was reminded that my E-903/4 parts appeared to be 'used', I suspect they may have been training pieces at the factory - no bother those, just some extra scratches and they were pre-dimpled!

  May 25, 2022     Finished organizing Wing Kit - (2 hours)       Category: Workshop

Finally spent some time sorting out the remainder of the wing kit hardware - all my hardware is now split between my cases and the small part bins that I designned and printed (primarily because the Flambeau cases weren't available as they were updating their website for a few weeks during the time I needed them - and considering they were about 5-9x marked up on Amazon, it was way cheaper to print my own).p

  Apr 30, 2022     Elevators - (2 hours) Category: Empennage

With the wing kit all sorted, and while waiting for a few more of the drawer-units to print on the 3D printer, I got back to building the plane. Since it was way too windy today to shoot primer, I moved on to the next portion of the empennage build - the Elevators. Pretty straightforward stuff today, had to cut 16 of the same parts from each other (bandsaw for the win) [e-1008], debur them and then label them as matched pairs.

I was thankful as they are Final-Sized hole parts, so I didn't have to do the match drilling - just a boatload of edge deburring and sharp corner smoothing, got 9 of the 16 done completely, all the holes are deburred, and all of them are cut into their respective parts. Next time in the shop, I just need to finish the edge deburring and labelling.

  Apr 30, 2022     Aggregate Inventory of Wing Parts - (12 hours)       Category: Wings

I've been working on inventorying the wing parts the past few weeks, an hour here and an hour there. I likely spent almost double the logged hours, but that was on storage and re-sorting parts. I ended up designing some small part drawers as my previous case-method wasn't going to work in time as Flambeau was undergoing a fairly length website overhaul project.

Regardless, I'm pretty happy with how everything ended up, things are well sorted, I have the entire empennage and wing kit stored on the wire shelves, and I was able to get back to building today!

  Apr 02, 2022     The Wings have arrived - (4 hours)       Category: Wings

Exciting times, the wings have finally arrived! Looks like that would make it a 9 month, 8 day duration from time of order placement to the time of crate arrival at my home. Honestly, not bad considering the backlog Vans has been working through, and their timing estimates were accurate to within +4 weeks from when I ordered.

The wing crates were much easier to offload from the semi with the forks, since the boxes were only ~200lbs or less each, they were an easy lift (albeit, long boxes). The crates were in good condition, missing a couple of the. 2x4 skids that are integral to the crates, but there was no internal damage to anything. Whomever packs these crates at Vans is an artist - I'm always impressed at how securely packed everything is.

Once I got the crates moved down into the airplane factory (reminder for my new-er readers: I'm currently working in a 1 car garage in my basement), I unloaded all of the part groupings to prepare for inventory. I'll likely have to redistribute my current parts and reorganize things so that I'm not constantly digging through parts when I'm trying to build.

Time-note: I unloaded for ~45 minutes on 3/29,and then unloaded/unpacked the crates on 4/2.

  Feb 21, 2022     Finished drilling HS skins - (1.6 hours) Category: Empennage

Finally finished drilling all of the rest of the HS skins - nothing hard, just a lot of moving clecos around and making sure that I didn't lose my spot. FWIW, I chose to do all the horizontal members top down, then all of the nose-spars, then each of the vertical spars from side to side.

Next up - Drilling out the rear spar #30 holes, as well as the spar web. Then a bunch of disassembly, labeling, and deburring.

  Feb 19, 2022     Drilling Part 1 - Horizontal Stabilizer - (.7 hour) Category: Empennage

Had a few spare minutes, so I did the 'easy' part of the drilling on the Horizontal Stabilizer (namely, the part where you drill the holes that don't have clecos in them). Before doing that, I also attached the spar web piece too.

Next up: Finish drilling the skins (aka - Cleco and memory gymnastics), and then drill the #30 holes on the rear stabilizer, and web.

  Feb 15, 2022     Finished Cleco'ing the Horizontal Stabilizer - (.5 hour)       Category: Empennage

Got my new batch of Clecos in the mail today so I unpacked all of those and got the horizontal stabilizer all cleco'd together and all ready for match/final drilling!

  Feb 13, 2022     Horizontal Stabilizer, things are looking like airplane parts - (3.5 hours)       Category: Empennage

Picked up where I left off yesterday, deburred the HS skin edges (have I mentioned how much I love the 1” 3M wheels on the angle grinder - it's a dream for doing skin edge deburring jobs). After that, I got the skins situated in their cradles and removed and got all of the nose ribs in place and cleco'd in - this was the first moment of truth as I was concerned on my ‘rounding' of the nose ribs to make sure they didn't dimple the leading edge of the HS. Good news, no dimples!

After the nose ribs were in place, I got the spar and ribs laid on top, aligned, and got the spar clecoed in. The next step involved HS-1014 and 1015 and slotting those into place (they go in the cut-out portions of the inner ribs and nest nicely in place). I got one side all clecoed in, and then when I got to the next side - I realized that the holes for the stabilizer were off by about 1/8” - which was confounding since these are pre-punched and standard distance holes. After some searching (no one else has had this problem), I did what anyone who was about to get angry with a piece of aluminum should do - I walked away. When I came back, I realized that my tables are sitting on a drain in my workshop, and they weren't perfectly level with each other. A quick leveling of the cradles and the holes lined up perfectly.

The next bad news - I don't have enough clecos, I only got about 75% of one side complete and I ran out of 3/32” clecos. I realized this as soon as I started cleco-in everything together as I was staring at my VS with the skins all cleco'd on still (I haven't had it inspected by the Tech Advisor yet, so I haven't done final rivets. Oh well, I spent a bit more time getting other pieces ready and then placed an order with Cleaveland Tool (I have a few hundred more cleco's coming my way, as well as a fancy angle drill which is going to come in handy in a few more days once it arrives)

  Feb 12, 2022     Putting the HS Ribs and Spars together - (3.5 hours)       Category: Empennage

Spent some quality time in the airplane factory today - decided to just keep the spar cleco'd (direction want it riveted, but it's still too cold for me to shoot primer), and continued on with the build instructions. Essentially, I did a bunch of assembly on the horizontal stabilizer spar, then drilled all of the spar to rib/nose-rib attachment points, and then rearranged my workspace a bit to get ready for the next step (which involves getting the spar and ribs mated to the skins in the HS cradle.

Nothing too crazy with this day, I was pleased that I had my handy nesting blocks around to make things a bit easier to drill and keep up off the workspace. I was also pleased that the previous wheel leveler I 3D printed ages ago worked in this setup (I had to shim 1 wheel too to get the tables mostly level).

  Jan 24, 2022     Simple bit of edge deburring - (1.5 hours) Category: Empennage

Figured I'd get ahead of the edge-deburring that will invariably slow me down from the more exciting parts of the build. With that, I de-blued and labeled the HS-904 inspar ribs and HS-1016 string web in preparation of the work on pages 8-8 and 8-9. Granted, all of this is likely to get slowed down here in a bit as I'm going to hit a point where I can't proceed until shooting some primer (which, considering the high of 5 degrees tomorrow) will either require me waiting a month or so for a lucky ‘warm' day OR building a rudimentary spray booth to spray in. I'm going to do my best to not let that future potential slow-down, well, slow me down.

So, it was a slow evening in the airplane factory, but nonetheless, productive after getting all 6 of the HS-904 and HS-1016 fully deburred and ready for the next step.

  Jan 23, 2022     Nose Spar Debur finish up and some HS cradles - (3 hours)       Category: Empennage

Spent a bit of time today finishing the deburring of the HS-905 spars. Once that was all done, I took a few minutes to realize that the 1004 inspar ribs aren't ever cleco'd to the HS-905 (by, y'know, turning the page in the book to see the schematic); so I grabbed a HS-904 and then clecoed them together so I had my stencil for making the cradles.

Luckily I had some scrap plywood laying around in the garage, so I went and made my 4 Horizontal Stabilizer cradles. It was a relatively easy job, while I know the instruction say to not work too hard making them perfect, I did take the time to do some rudimentary measurements on the pictured cradles to make sure I had enough material at the side and bottom of the cradles. As a happy accident, the cutoff I had after each cradle was plenty wide enough for a base too.

After fighting with using the jigsaw as a detail-radius tool, I decided to grab the 11/16” drill bit and used that to initially drill out the leading edge (base) of each cradle, this made things much easier. After making the cradle forms, I set the miter saw so that it could make some rudimentary dado-style cuts, and I cut a board-width into each base in the middle. A bit of glue and a few staples through the bottom of the base and I had my cradles all made. After that, I took some duct tape (doubled up near the leading edge since I'm paranoid for the future leading edge sitting in there) and finished up the cradles.

  Jan 22, 2022     Deburring and shaping HS-1004 Inspar Ribs - (1.5 hours) Category: Empennage

Had a bit of time today sitting around on hold with some customer service reps - took the time to get some deburring wrapped up on the Inspar ribs, and also started on the 8 HS-905 nose ribs. Was happily surprised to learn that I wasn't going to have to figure out how to make a nice oval hole per the instructions, as the “new” spars already have both lightening as well as trim cable holes pre-made.

  Jan 11, 2022     Long time no post - HS spar work (so much deburring) - (3.5 hours)       Category: Tools

Well - it's been far too long since I've updated my build log - had a mix of a lot of holiday-prep and holiday relaxing. I got a few things done on the plane, which I still need to go update yet (will likely be short notes), but in the meantime - here's to hoping to getting back on track.

I'm currently on the Horizontal Stabilizer, working on the main spar. Started today's build session picking up on the end of page 8-5 - essentially, I had finished all of the drilling portions and just need to debur a whole bunch of holes. Once I had finished that, I was at the ‘prime' step - so I added those parts to my collection of ‘things ready to prime once it's not 5 degrees outside' stack. Currently, that pile includes: HS-1013, HS-1008 L/R, HS-1007, HS-1002, HS-906, HS-1003,

Then I pulled out all eight of the HS-1004 (inspar ribs for the HS). I trimmed the four of them as requested (2 cuts on all of them, and additional 2 cuts on the other two). Then went through the always tedious job of deburring all 8 of the flanges (combination of about 4-8 different files, scotchbrite pads (gray), and the scotchbrite wheels).

  Dec 25, 2021     MCS on the HS Spar - (.5 hour) Category: Empennage

Just a quick bit of work today - did the few Machine Counter Sinks, and then started disassembly/clean-up of the parts.

  Dec 24, 2021     Lots and Lots of Drilling and Cleco-ing - (1.5 hours) Category: Empennage

With Amy on a 24hr shift today, I spent some time working on the HS-1002/1007/1008/1013 parts, primarily the effort was spent cleco-ing the assembly back together, drilling, cleaning, and then prepping for the machine counter sinks. (Which I'll do tomorrow)

  Nov 14, 2021     Final Drilling and deburring of HS-1008L/R - (1 hour) Category: Empennage

Did the final bits of polishing of the edges and holes I had drilled on HS-1008L/R - these two little parts took me a while to make, but I'm quite satisfied with how they came out (I'm sure any rookie machinist would be appalled at the work and methods used).

  Nov 13, 2021     Working on HS-1008L/R - (3 hours)       Category: Empennage

So, this pesky little part, has caused me some challenges…After my initial attempt at machining this out of the small amount of angle they send you in the kit, I realized that my…ummmm…lack of accuracy with the bandsaw to cut it wasn't going to work (read: I missed the line by over 1/8”). After a few swear words of this error made months ago, I started back at it today with a new 3' piece of angle ordered from Vans, and a proper saw blade on my miter saw to make the cuts straight.

Good news - the right tool does indeed make the job go much smoother. After cutting the raw shapes out of the angle, I deburred them and then went to drill the two mounting and upper locating holes. It was at this point that I realized that I really didn't want to mess this part up again, so I quickly modeled up a 3D jig in CAD that would let me nest my part into it and then use it as drill guides. An hour later, and my guide was complete and I'm happy to report that it worked famously (Note to self: upload pictures later when at a proper computer).

  Aug 30, 2021     M12 Rivet Puller and Assorted Cleaveland Order Category: Tools

Picked up the M12 Riveter from Acme Tools - debated a lot on this one (pneumatic vs. battery), and decided to opt for the battery one as I already have the M12 system, and it gave me a little bit of flexibility in the future (not having to drag an air hose when using it).

I also ordered 100 each of the 3/32 and 1/8" clecos from Cleaveland, a couple more 1" scotchbrite wheels for the angle ginder (which are most useful for skin and lightening hole deburring), the rivet-gun dimple set adapter (just in case), a 4" no hole yoke for close-quarter dimpling, and another countersink cage (to prevent a lot of wasted time setting up the 3/32 and 1/8" countersinks.

  Aug 29, 2021     Assemble VS, Dimple Rudder Skins, rivet rudder stiffeners - (3 hours)       Category: Empennage

With the DRDT-2 tables all built from yesterday, I was excited to make some progress on starting to close up the VS and continue on the rudder assembly. I started with the Vertical Stabilizer, and put everything back together (6-6, #1). I debated on whether to start riveting the skin on, but decided against it as my Tech Counselor wants to see everything prior to fully closing things up. Since the directions want me to rivet the vertical stabilizer along the middle ribs first, then upper, then spars (effectively, closing it up quickly), I decided to hold off after clecoing it all together. (Note to self: order more clecos)

After that, I moved on to step 7-6 #11, and then 7- 7#5; this meant I had to dimple the rudder skins. I recall reading somewhere of others using a laser pointer to serve as a guide of where to drop the skin onto the pointy side of the dimple die (since the whole, "slide the metal around on the dimple die looking for the hole" is a recipe for scratches all over the skins). I decided to make a dodgy proof of concept using a laser level and a tripod. This method worked surprisingly well and made the dimpling process MUCH quicker.

After dimpling both skins (at least, the majority of them, since not all holes have been final drilled yet) I moved on to back-riveting the stiffeners onto each rudder skin. I forgot just how satisfying (and fast) back riveting is - when I did it on the practice kits I only did it for 1 or 2 rivets at a time. This time, the ability to line up 12 or 13 rivets at a time (thanks, btw, riveting tape) meant that riveting went ultra-fast. I messed up a few rivets along the way, 4 of them, all over-driven (doh!). Luckily, I'm getting better at drilling out rivets, so this wasn't a big deal, I slightly over-sized two of the holes, but I selected the next size rivet and that covered the mil-specs for head depth, width, and hole coverage.

  Aug 28, 2021     Dimple VS skins and rudder skins - (1 hour) Category: Empennage

After building the DRDT-2 tables, I spent sometime setting everything up and getting the hang of using the DRDT-2 now with it's fancy tables - then got to work on dimpling the VS skin and the two rudder skins. I ended up squeezing the sides of the VS skins (as I hadn't yet figured out a good way of easily locating the pointy-side of the dimple die), and then dimpled the VS skin. After a busy day of woodworking (building the DRDT-2 tables), I called it for the day.

  Aug 28, 2021     DRDT-2 Table Build - (5 hours)       Category: Workshop

I had been putting off the dimpling of the VS skin and the rudder skins as I hadn't yet built a table for the DRDT-2. I was originally thinking of an 'in-between' mount for it, where it was be cradled between two of my workbenches (an idea conceived prior to receiving my empennage kit). However, after getting used to my shop and the way that everything flows, I decided that the plans suggested for the DRDT-2 work tables was an excellent place to start.

I had some leftover marine-grade 1/2" plywood, so I used that to build the tabbles. I built to the spec of the plans mostly, the only deviation was that I created two bottom strips to mount under the 8x8" spanner that runs between the two sides of the table. These strips allowed me to use the 1.5" screws I had on hand to attach the 8" spanning piece, and also serve as guides to keep the table tight to the middle of the DRDT. As much as gluing and pre-drilling holes bug me in woodworking, I decided to do this right, and pre-drilled, glued, and screwed everything together. After 20 minutes or so, I stapled a piece of an old area-rug to it to serve as the cushioning/scratch-resistant surface for the skins, then put it to the test with dimpling the skins.

  Aug 27, 2021     Rudder Dimpling, Trailing Edge Countersink - (1.7 hours)       Category: Empennage

Finished dimpling the few pieces that needed in on the spars, ribs, and stiffeners. After that, I setup the countersink for countersinking the trailing edge. I wasted about 20 minutes trying to set it up on the drill press, at which point I realized that I'd probably be better off chucking the countersink in my handheld drill and doing it that way - glad I did, much better feel and great results. I must say, I was quite happy with the trailing edge wedge I designed and printed for this - I ended up using both 12" pieces butted up to each other. I clamped the wedge to the jig, and then was able to countersink about 20" of wedge at a time.

After that, I attached the rudder stops to the bottom bracket (VS-01010) and called it a night.

  Aug 26, 2021     Rudder Work, Dimpling and Rivets - 7-7 #2-4 - (1.2 hours)       Category: Empennage

Finished riveting the bottom rudder rib together and then looked through for what was next - which reminded me I had dimpled the rudder parts yet (I dimple after priming to ease the application of primer)...and then I realized that I would have to remove at least some of the rivets I had just finished setting in the VS bottom spar to dimple the 4 forward most holes (as there simply isn't any clearance to get a dimple die in there, not even a close fit (unless you have a perfectly sized mandrel you can feed through the opposing side hole). So I drilled out four rivets which gave me enough play to squeeze in the dimples on the bottom rib. I also dimpled the the Rudder Spar (R-1002).

After that, I moved on to the reinforcement plates and nutplates and got those all attached to the rudder - squeezed all those rivets except the nutplates - the nutplate was interfering with the nose of my squeezer yoke, so I just bucked those rivets instead.

  Aug 25, 2021     VS Spar Riveting and Rudder work [6-5 #1, #12, #13; 7-7 #1 - (1.8 hours) Category: Empennage

Worked on putting together the VS spars (except, of course, the bottom two, since I'll need to remove those to rivet the VS skin on). I was really trying to make my squeezer work in this scenario - but it wasn't really going to be ideal, so I busted out the rivet gun and bucking bar. First order of business was drilling out the 3 rivets from the top of the VS spar that I had foolishly riveted before; then I started the riveting process. I was happy I picked up another thinner and longer tungsten bar (in addition to the 1"x1"x1.5" bar I have) as it fit really well in the tight areas I was riveting.

I messed up 1 rivet because I let the rivet gun slip off the top of the rivet (doh!), but aside from that things went pretty well with the rivet gun - I had 1 rivet that was over-driven according to the rivet guide, but I measured the diameter and height of the shop head and was still within the mil-spec, so I left the one rivet in place. After the 11 rivets were done on the VS, I moved on to the rudder skeleton work (as I haven't built tables for my DRDT-2 yet).

Amusingly (annoyingly?) enough, the rudder-stops aren't deburred until after the 'priming' step in the instructions (I thought I had caught all of these surprises... but I missed this one). So I deburred the stops, cleaned them with PreKote, and then used my rattle-can of SEM etching primer (which I was very thankful I had purchased for just these kinds of scenarios where I don't want to setup for a full priming session with my usual 2-part primer). The colors of the primer are a bit different, which I'm good with as I can easily tell which primer was used where.

In between coats of primer, I worked on riveting one of the Rudder ribs and started wrapping my head around riveting on the nutplate to the rudder horn. Finally, while writing this entry, I realized I also missed priming the R-1007 Striker plates, so I'll work that into my next priming session too.

  Aug 24, 2021     Finished up rivets on the rear VS spar - (1 hour)       Category: Empennage

Finished up the 30 remaining rivets on the rear spar (so completed 6-4, #6); I was quite pleased with the flush rivets - the time spent setting up the machine countersink to just the right depth paid off as the finish is super smooth between the part and the rivet. Getting a bit quicker at setting rivets as well with the squeezer now that I've gotten the routine down a bit more too. After setting the rivets on the rear spar, I moved on to the next step (putting the VS spars together in prep for riveting, when I noticed that the last three rivets I set on the spar doubler custom piece I made shouldn't have been set...So I'll be drilling those out next I'm in the shop (facepalm).

  Aug 23, 2021     VS Rear Spar Riveting (6-4, #6) - (1 hour)       Category: Empennage

Took some time this evening to do some more rivets on the rear spar, I chose to start at the middle hinge (VS-1011) and then work down. I set the first rivet and it appeared to be a non-ideal set..I marked it for later removal and set the next three on the VS-1011 bracket edge (2 each from the top and bottom brackets). Upon closer inspection, I wasn't happy with the rivets - they all had a clenching tendency. So I drilled them out (you can see the drilled out picture below with what I mean about the rivets, they were all clenched over... Walked away from the parts for a bit and did some research and realized that I was assuming the pneumatic squeezer was mainly on autopilot upon reaching the compression portion of its stroke - couldn't be more wrong. So, I made some changes, namely:
1. Put the parts in my vise so I could use two hands on the squeezer and or squeezer+part.
2. This made it easier to verify my squeezer was normal to my work, I could also feather the trigger in a bit and steer the squeezer's direction to keep it normal
3. Success - SOOOOO much better.

Not a bad night overall, drilled out my first rivets of the plane and got 24 of them set.

  Aug 22, 2021     Dimpling and Rivets on the Vertical Stab spars - (1.6 hours)       Category: Empennage

Started today off with a bunch of dimpling, namely of all the spars for the vertical stabilizer. (6-3, steps #7 and #10). I'm using the substructure dyes from Cleaveland to make the skin to structure mating even closer - and the dyes work great. I appreciate that the substructure die is even a smaller diameter than the 'normal' skin dies, enabling it to get into tighter areas a bit more easily. Most of the dimpling was done with the pneumatic squeezer as the DRDT-2 just wasn't the right tools for this job (since, y'know, the ram would have to go through the other side of each spar for it to work). After dimpling all of the spars, taking special note to NOT dimple the areas called out (my marking for this is an S right by the hole), I moved on to riveting.

I riveted the upper bracket onto the VS spar, as well as the doubler plate (6-4 #4 and #5), then reassembled the doublers on the VS spar. Upon doing this, I discovered that the VS-1014 L/R pieces somehow weren't final drilled (doh), so I final drilled and deburred those, then got everything cleco'd together in prep for riveting that assembly.

  Aug 21, 2021     First Rivets on the Vertical Stab! - (.7 hour)       Category: Empennage

As the primer was fully cured and showing excellent adhesion, I was excited to get into the shop and remember how to rivet again (it's been a while since my practice kits). Since it had been a while, I made a little practice piece using some of the cutoffs from the rudder assembly (the angle aluminum) and some of the scratch aluminum pieces from the "TRIM KIT" to make sure I remembered how to squeeze rivets (thankfully, I did). After some quick practice there, I set about doing some really quick dimpling on the nutplates, doubler, and skin, then set the first 11 rivets of the airframe! Amusingly enough, these rivets were for my first plans-deviation (which is a simple doubler to support the hole I made in VS-1006 for potential future electrical wire pass through).

  Aug 15, 2021     Prep and First run of Primer for the Vertical Stab and Rudder Parts - (8 hours)       Category: Priming

So, this was a big day - first time I was shooting primer and it's been a solid 5+ years since I've used a HVLP spray gun. Lots going on today, the summary:
1. Cleaned the parts
2. Build the spray table
3. Shot Primer
4. Cleaned Up

Of course, there was a bunch more involved in all of this, I'll likely post a longer-form blog post, but procedurally, here's what I did:
1. Cleaning: For all parts, I sprayed them with PreKote, used Gray scotchbrite pads to scuff and work the prekote into a lather, then immediately rinsed with a bunch of water, and set them on the table to airdry. Note: I only did a single prekote application, instructions want two, but based on other's procedures I've read and a thorough scrubbing, my dice-roll of a single application worked fantastically!
2. Spray table: I build a 5' x 3' frame made from 2x4s, and then made a couple of propped-up legs to give the frame some angle (intention is that the frame can be set on folding tables for spraying. I then covered the frame with hardware mesh leftover from our chicken coop.
3. Shooting Primer: I'm using Azko's 2 part Epoxy Primer (namely: 463-12-8 and CA-116). After much deliberation, I chose this due to it's fabled durability, despite the safety procedures it requires. This is an industrial coating with nasty stuff (isocyanates) which demands a powered-air respirator and full coverage of skin. The usage of this product is straightforward enough - a 30 minute induction time post initial mix, I let it sit for about 40 minutes after mixing - I used clean stir sticks for each part, mixed in the PPS cup I was using, and then sealed the PPS cup. I extracted liquid from the cans using clean syringes, which I'll dispose of after each use. I mixed to line '3' on the PPS cup, which yielded 8oz of primer for my project today (a SWAG, that actually was pretty accurate). I sprayed using the 3M PPS 2.0 gun and it worked surprisingly well; the only challenge I had was spraying the VS skins (I had funky glare from the sun that made seeing what I was spraying a challenge). Aside from that, the only other challenge was the fact that my angle aluminum parts for the rudder blew around from the spray air). After spraying, I let parts dry a few minutes, then flipped and sprayed the other side.
4. Parts were allowed to cure outside for approximately 4 hours before I moved them indoors for the night. I used the TR-19 thinner to clean the few parts of the gun that needed cleaning, and packed up my respirator, gun, tables, etc.

Results: Overall, I'm quite pleased with my first priming session - I had very few runs, and only a couple of misses. There was some dry-spray that I hit the VS with, but again, that's being critical and it was solely my fault for bad lighting (I was spraying outdoors in 80F and about 65% RH. The parts turned out great, and I'm excited to move along to dimpling and shooting my first rivets for the plane!

  Aug 10, 2021     Finished up Step 8 and 10 on 7-6 - (1.4 hours)       Category: Empennage

Deburred all of the holes using the single flute debur tip on all of the ribs/spars, and 3M pads (maroon and then gray) on the skins. After that, I put the bend in the trailing edge with the most excellent edge former tool from Cleaveland tool.

Finished up the evening with a quick test fit of the simple jig I designed for the machine-countersinking of the trailing edge wedge - made 2 of them out of PLA (little bit stiffer than ABS) that are each 12" long. Will test them out next I'm in the shop, but in the meantime, here's a few pictures of the jigs (the large holes of the jig align with the small holes of the wedge to give plenty of countersink clearance) and the small jig holes are easily visible through the larger lightening holes of the wedge.

  Aug 09, 2021     Finished Rudder Match Drilling - (1.6 hours)       Category: Empennage

Finished up the (for me at least) epically long Step 6 on 7-6, which entailed much match (final) drilling, lots of cleco moving around, and (finally) disassembling the entire assembly for deburring (which will happen another day). But hey, at least I got to check off steps 6,7, and 9 on page 7-6!

Snapped a few pics of the process, rudder on its side, with 1 skin off, and then the individual parts awaiting deburring.

  Jul 17, 2021     7-6 Leading Edge Match Drill - (.7 hour) Category: Empennage

Hadn't been in the shop for a while (summer-time projects have kept me busy) - but I found a few free minutes so I worked on match drilling the leading edge of the rudder. Not much work accomplished, but felt good to keep making progress.

  Jun 27, 2021     Rudder work - 7-6 Assembly - (4 hours)       Category: Empennage

Worked on section 7-6, which involved the usual combination of part-prep, sub-assembly building, and skin attachment in preparation for final drilling. With the rudder skins being so thin (.016", 0.4mm), some extra care is definitely required to avoid dings, scratches, etc. I had one very small ding in mine, but it hammered out nicely (I left it circled, it's on an interior of one of the panels. It may have occurred when moving the skins and the corner of one rested a bit to quickly onto the other...pesky slippery skins). I also briefly debated the whole remove the vinyl from the edges/rivet lines - but since this plane will be painted, I saw little benefit to the extra work.

To debur the really thin skins, I found the combination of the pull type debur tool (the one Cleaveland sells, it's basically a V-shaped cutter you put in your manual debur handle, and the V ride along both sides of the skins) and the 1" 3M wheel on an angle grinder worked wonders. The little grooves that develop in the wheel are helpful since you can just ride that along the edge of the skins and it deburs and polishes both sides quite nicely.

Got the rudder all assembled (both skins cleco'd on, and the trailing edge is all trimmed and in place as well - I'll have to buy some heavy angle iron for future clamping to keep that piece nice and perfectly straight. Presently, I have every hole cleco'd, with cleco's going in opposite directions to prevent any directional forces becoming unbalanced.

In prep for the final drilling, I did have to look up how exactly to drill the trailing edge (the whole don't drill perpendicular to the skin, drill perpendicular to the chord line of the rudder). I still need to research a bit more, but it appears a common method is to simply stand the rudder on it's back (where it will attach to the vertical stab), and then drill parallel to table-top.

  Jun 26, 2021     Rudder work - spar assembly 7-4 and 7-5 - (3.5 hours)       Category: Empennage

Worked through sections 7-4 and 7-5; mainly a bunch of part prep, assembly, and final drilling. Nothing terribly noteworthy, but it was nice to get back in the shop.

  Jun 14, 2021     Wing Kit Ordered Category: Wings

Exciting times, given the 7 month lead time on the slow-build wing kit, I've placed my wing order as of today, let the great countdown to January (-ish) 2022 begin!

  Jun 13, 2021     Vertical Stab Parts all ready for priming - (2 hours) Category: Empennage

Finished up all of the random steps I couldn't previously do because of the missing parts from my order (but hooray, I have them all now). Today I finished up the machine countersinking of the rear spar, some drilling of the VS-1002's doubler, and a bit more machine countersinking there.

I also finished fabricating my VS-1006 doubler (essentially, I made a hole in case I ever need to get wires, etc. in through the top of the VS; dropped in a couple of K-1000-3 nutplates on either side of the hole for good measure as well. I'll snag pictures of that and post in the future, but it's largely derivative work from another builder (my part has the distinction of having a less-aligned-layout).

With all that done, the VS parts are all ready for priming - since I'm doing an epoxy primer, I haven't dimpled anything (I'll do that after priming - I understand that is an easier method to spray vs. dealing with the elevation changes of dimples.

  Jun 12, 2021     Work on getting VS parts ready up to priming steps - (2 hours)       Category: Empennage

With all my parts on hand now, I picked up on the VS work - this involved rebuilding the rear spar assembly and attaching the spar web to do some marking steps (namely, where the screw holes are along the bottom of the VS). Got that all marked up, then spent a bunch of time on the countersink cage - sucker takes a while to get dialed in just right, but once you're there it's easy to run a whole bunch of holes to the perfect depth.

Some of the countersinks on this one are on the rear spar (and you essentially countersink into the Left and Right spar doublers during that operation). The trick here is that you're going all the way through VS-1003 and you'll have the smallest amount of counter-sink on the left and right doublers as well. To make sure I was countersinking deep enough, I used some of the handy 'trim-pack' pieces of aluminum left over from the VS-1006 doubler I made, and used that to mimic some skin dimpled holes - I think this 'tool' will prove to be quite useful with all the future counter-sinking I have to do. Especially since I realized I also have #30 sized holes to work on too - so now that tool has both 40 (3/32") and 30 (1/8") dimples on it.

  Jun 05, 2021     Bit of Counter Sinking on the VS - (.7 hour) Category: Empennage

Been working on a bunch of outdoor projects (namely, installing a flagstone patio and firepit), so haven't had much time for the build. However, I had a free (almost) hour, so I got back into the shop and worked on setting up and starting some machine countersinking for the Vertical Stab.

  May 28, 2021     Inventory of some Back-Ordered parts and a bunch of deburring - (3 hours) Category: Empennage

Received (most) of the back-ordered parts I was missing, now I'm only missing:
Bag 1145 - This is the bag that was missing from the original order, though not marked as back-ordered, Vans indicated they would ship it 4/29, though haven't heard anything recent there so I sent a reminder email
Bag 1001 - I recently received this as part of my backordered parts (Invoice 193894), and I am missing the following items from that bag:
Qty 2 - HS-911-PC
Qty 8 - HS-912-PC

So I finished the rest of the inventorying of the parts, then continued with finishing deburring the stiffeners and the Rudder horn - lots of time on the 3M wheels, and then a bunch of hand filing/scotchbrite pads to get the last mile. Finally got everything all debburred though so I can now get on to more exciting build tasks (plus, with the news parts, I can pick up on the Vertical Stabilizer where I had to stop prior).

  May 20, 2021     Cut Stiffeners and some deburring - (1 hour)       Category: Empennage

Had a spare hour before I had to work this morning, so I decided to finish cutting up the stiffeners as the holding block I had designed and printed last night was ready for its initial test. I'm happy to report that the block worked better than I could've hoped for - I suspect I'll be using these blocks for many other sawing purposes in the future, plus - it has the added benefit of being able to hold, cradle, etc. aluminum sheet.

Also shown in the photos below is the zero clearance plate I made for the band saw (the original plate is just a plastic piece with a 15x20mm hole around the blade, which was a convenient place for small cutoffs to fall, and was making rougher cuts than I would've liked. The plate is currently just made out of PLA (it was honestly supposed to be a fitment prototype only), but it fit well and since it's a relatively static part that doesn't really see any real heat - I figured I'd just use it until it fails or needs to be replaced and then I'll print a proper ABS or Nylon version of it).

  May 19, 2021     Prepped Rudder Parts - (3 hours)       Category: Empennage

After marking the Tom and Bottom Ribs, Shear Clips, and stiffeners where they all needed to be cut, I cut down the parts on the bandsaw and with a cutoff wheel on the angle-grinder (just on the stiffeners, which wouldn't fit into the bandsaw. After that, I deburred everything - well, almost everything - As I was about to debur the stiffeners I realized I had forgotten to cut off the angle portion from them; since I marked the parts so that I have to balance the 'L' shape on an edge and not a face, I called it a night by designing and starting to print a simple sled to put each angle piece into- will give me much more stability and better grip when sawing down these pieces (and other future pieces).

  May 11, 2021     VS rib debur - (.5 hour) Category: Empennage

Finished deburring all of the final drilling from the initial skin attach

  May 08, 2021     Finished VS Skin final drill and started debur - (1 hour) Category: Empennage

Had a bit of free time so I finished final drilling the VS skin, then took it all apart, deburred the skin both sides (using the twist-style tool on the front of the skins and maroon scotchbrite on the back). Still have to debur all of the ribs and rear spar yet.

  May 02, 2021     Vertical Stabilizer - First Skin Attach - (2.5 hours)       Category: Empennage

Did a bit of research to figure out if the instructions were ever going to tell me to flute or not (they don't), so I went ahead and flattened the ribs out pretty well with the fluting pliers, then assembled the vertical stabilizer skeleton (sans hinge brackets, of course). Couldn't help myself reading ahead one more step to see that I attach the skin for some match drilling, so I attached the skin - taking extra care around the leading edge considering the cautionary tales I've read only (rib-tips not properly rounded = marking against the front leading edge). Thankfully, it looks like I avoided any of those issues; but I did get to experience the joy/frustration of attempting to align the skeleton to the skin holes; wasn't too bad though - had to use a punch here and there to manipulate the rib through a skin hole, but got everything all clecoed together - marking the first time in the project that something actually looked like an airplane part!

By way of tracking, I also final-drilled one side of the skin (tagged with a green arrow to remind me)

  May 01, 2021     Part Prep for VS Skeleton - (3.5 hours)       Category: Empennage

I got as far as possible on the rear spar until I get my back-ordered parts, so I jumped ahead to pg 6-3 and started work on prepping the skeleton (So, step 1 on the page). Took a while, but I have everything all deburred and (hopefully) shaped correctly so that I don't get ripples/divots when I put on the skin. Prepped parts include: VS-1006, VS-1002, VS-1013, VS-1005, VS-1007, VS-1004.

Tool-wise (this will be painfully obvious to anyone with experience, and perhaps less obvious to those that are somewhat new to building; also, I'm a beginner so don't take this as gospel - there's a good chance I'm doing something suboptimal here) I used a multitude of tools to debur this collection of parts:
-3M wheels on grinder: I use these whenever I have access to the edge and it can fit in the grinder/wheel radius and footprint - essentially anything long works really here, I have the medium and fine wheels, so I hit it first with medium and give it a quick final pass on the Fines.
-Handheld debur blade - worked wonderfully on the lightening holes
-Maroon Scotchbrite pads - cut a small piece and used it to get into right places (especially the rear side of the flanges
-Needle files - to contour the small holes around the various flange tabs
-1" scotchbrite wheels on angle grinder - for detailed/tricky areas (also used the fine wheel here for the lightening holes)

So, lots of tools and methods in use to debur and knock down anything that could create a stress riser in the future.

  Apr 30, 2021     Deburring of VS-1003, VS-1014L/R, and VS-1008 - (1 hour) Category: Empennage

Finished up some deburring of the flange drilling I had done the other day, re-assembled VS-1003 and VS-1014L/R, and then edge de-burred VS-1008.

Getting close to being stuck on this sub-assembly as my hinge brackets are among the dreaded Back-Ordered parts, but I'll get everything as far along as I can and then move on to the next non-dependent portion of work.

  Apr 28, 2021     Vertical Stab - Work Begins - (4 hours) Category: Empennage

And it's official, I'm building a plane now, only thousands of hours left and this thing will fly! Started out (as just about everyone does) with the Vertical Stabilizer - first order of business is marking and trimming down the two spar caps - easy enough, just have to saw straight on the bandsaw...turns out, I didn't saw perfectly straight, but fixed up most of that messy-line with the scotchbrite wheels afterward. From there I drilled the Spar caps into the main spar web, did the hole deburring, and got about 2/3 of the way through drilling the spar flanges.

Tool tips - I don't have the fancy drill springs (yet), but made a lofi version by piercing an earplug with my punch, then quickly slipping it over the drill bit. It does a great job on preventing the chuck from hitting the spar during match drilling, though it is apt to pick up some aluminum chips. Also, Boelube = miracle product, made the drilling a lot cleaner and the stuff lasts for an impressively long time on the drill bits.

  Apr 23, 2021     More Tool Acquisition Category: Tools

After the initial toolkit, I realized I needed some more stuff, picked up the following things between Cleaveland and Aircraft Spruce:
-Angle Grinder Kit (to help with deburring now and cutting fiberglass later)
-Longeron Yoke: Going to help with all of the dimpling coming up
-Sub-structure and Tank Dies: I'm hoping to make my assemblies a bit easier to work with, wanted to give these a shot (the sub-structure die having an 11 thou offset and the tank dies having a 7 thou offset
-Primer: When with the standby AzkoNobel 463-12-8, seems to be the tried and true option
-Some files: hilariously, I didn't have enough of these, picked some up
-Accuspray Gun: To shoot primer, probably a bit overkill, but I liked the ability to chuck a spray tip if it got jacked up vs scrubbing and playing with chemicals for hours
-Bunch of PPS cups
-1/8 and 3/16" drills - I have these fractionals in my wood working kit, but I picked up some jobber size cobalts for ease of use
-More Clecos - with the Wedgeloc's back in stock, I increased my Cleco count by another 100 for the 3/32 and 50 for the 1/8 size

  Apr 23, 2021     Light Box and OP-51 completed       Category: Practice Kit

With the empennage parts sitting around all organized, I finished up my two additional practice kits - the Lightbox and OP-51 (this is the one that comes with your Empennage kit). Pro-tip: Be sure to pick up another practice kit and don't only rely on OP-51 as your only learning piece. While OP-51 does show a lot of different skills, the toolbox and/or lightbox help too. If you're between the toolbox and lightbox, get the toolbox - not only is it cheaper, but it requires more skills and variety than the lightbox - but hey, the lightbox looks WAY cooler - so just get both.

On to the empennage and counting build hours!

  Apr 17, 2021     Inventory Completed - (3 hours)       Category: Empennage

Finished up inventory of the empennage kit and go everything all put away on the storage shelves and into the part boxes. I'm pretty pleased with the organization I have - for all of the larger parts on the shelves, I tracked which sub-kit they came in (while I realize the instructions don't reference that kind of information, I can always cross-reference the packing list). For my part boxes, I ended up with a case of (mostly) rivets (and three varieties of nutplates), and the other box is assorted small hardware (nuts, bolts, screws, cotter pins, etc.).

For my kit specifically, I have the following items on back-order:
Bag 1001 - Variety of small parts (brackets, reinforcement plates, etc.)
Bag 1130 - Platenuts
Bag 1145 - Bearings and washers [While marked B/O on packing list, this wasn't included as backordered on my invoice so I'll follow up on this bag]
WD-605-{L&R}-1 PC - Elevator Horn

And based on inventory, I was only shorted a few items, namely:
-Bag 1133-1: Missing 3 (22/25) K1100-06
-Bag 1134: Missing 1 (35/36) AN507-6R6
-Bag 1135: Missing 1 (35/36) AN507C632R8

Now I just have to knock out my Van's light up box (practice kit #2), and the small practice kit that comes with the RV-10 kit, and then I'll be off to the races.

  Apr 16, 2021     More inventory - (1 hour) Category: Empennage

Spent some more time inventorying everything and getting things sorted out.

  Apr 13, 2021     Empennage Arrives and Initial Unpacking - (2 hours)       Category: Empennage

Exciting day, the empennage arrived! I've generally had good luck with freight, though I have run into a few times where there's been minor to extensive damage - happily, the crate was completely undamaged inside and out! Old Dominion was the freight company, and their service was great - everything was on time, their communication was great, and my driver was awesome too. For those unaware, this crate is about 4' x 10' x 1.5' in dimension, weighing in at about 300lbs. Our driveway is about 400' long, and the turn is such that it's really difficult for a semi-trailer to back down the driveway, so the truck just pulled up at the end of the driveway - thankfully, I recently purchased a pair of forks for our tractor, which meant I was able to pick the crate off the truck (no need for awkward lift gate antics), and easily bring it to my shop.

Once in the shop, I realized just how big the crate was (and how small my shop is, comparatively) - but got everything unpacked, checked all of the packing paper for any errant parts. As many have commented before, those who pack these crates at Vans are masters of the craft - everything was secure, undamaged, and easy to unpack. Once the crate was emptied, I moved it out of the shop so that I could start the process of inventorying everything (only 7 pages of packing list items to go through).

All in all, an exciting start to the build.

  Apr 09, 2021     Workshop Starting Point       Category: Workshop

As I was researching building, I spent a good amount of time trying to get a feel for people's shops - so here's a quick look at my (initial) shop. This is a 1-car garage (a garden garage, as it's in our walk-out basement); it's about 15.5' long, and 12.5 wide. I finished it and painted it an off-white, and added can lighting to improve lighting. For now, our lawn mower and our garden seeds are also hanging out in the 'Airplane Factory'. I've dubbed this my initial shop, since it'll be large enough for the empennage and wings, though things will start to get tighter once I start the fuselage - and it definitely won't work once I start mating the fuse and empennage. But, that's a problem for the future!

I ran a compressed-air line (using the most excellent RapidAir kit) through the the joist-space from our upper garage (where my 30 gal. air compressor is located) so I have an outlet in the shop now too - it's not shown in the photos, but is just to the right of my red tool cart. It's great to have the air compressor located elsewhere, I don't have to deal with any compressor noise.

Currently, I have 1 of the EAA1000 tables built, as well as a smaller table using the plywood offcuts which will likely play many different roles throughout the build - for now it's my DRDT storage table and where I have my vise mounted (p.s. make sure you have a vise in the shop - sounds obvious, but you'll use it...a lot. I picked up a Yost 750E and custom printed some softjaws - I started with ABS, and if I need something more durable I can always print up some nylon ones too). I'll be making at least one more of the EAA1000 tables to start as well. I repurposed an old tool cart (actually, it's a 30+ year old crash cart), and that houses most of the commonly accessed tools I'll be using.

For storing the myriad of small parts, I have a couple of part boxes (from Flambeau Cases, 1024-2 and 1032-2) - I printed some smaller boxes to slip within these cavities to make it easy to get small parts in/out of the cases. So far this has worked well for the practice kit - I can quickly and easily find the parts, pull out the bins when I need them, and them put them safely out of the way for later. Plus, I have a lip on the inner-boxes that prevent things from sliding out, and they're sized to perfectly seat against the top...I haven't given these a 'shake test', but they should do a great job for my purpose (from shelf to table and back).

I've also made a number of other storage solutions for things like clecos, working part dishes, etc. I'm sure that scrounged and re-cycled containers work just as well, but since i have quick access to a couple of 3D printers, I have found it to be quite easy to design and print my custom storage solutions.

  Apr 09, 2021     Completed Toolkit       Category: Practice Kit

Well, it probably took me a total of 4-6 hours of actually working on this little, tiny, seemingly innocuous toolbox - and man am I glad I had this practice kit to hone some skills on vs. learning the very hard way on the empennage first. Among the learnings (this may be helpful for the new builders out there, and hilarious for the experienced ones):
1. Squeezing Rivets is a dream compared to bucking rivets for the first time, especially with a pneumatic squeezer.
2. If you get a rivet set stuck in the ram of your pneumatic squeeze...do not attempt to pull it out with a needlenose pliers - just take the darn yoke off, remove the ram, throw it in a vise, and then pull on the set. (not following this is a great way to potentially squeeze your thumb in the needlenose pliers while you're pulling on the set, the ram is moving, etc. etc...guess how I know).
3. When bucking rivets, remember to not put your finger on a dumb place of the bucking bar (read: between the skin and the bucking bar on the tight corner rivets)...unless, of course, you're looking for a good way to get a small blood blister when you pinch your hand.
4. Figure out a good method of cleaning up all the aluminum shavings from match drilling (shop vac or otherwise) - those shaving like to scratch skins, and embed in socks.
5. Smileys happen - to reduce smileys- practice, practice, and practice somemore. I have a somewhat dented toolbox from staring at the bucking bar and not splitting my gaze between the two.
6. Apply reverse tension when using a pneumatic cleco remover to prevent the cleco from lightly scratching the surface of the skin.
7. Respect your pneumatic tools capabilities (happy to report no error here on my part), disconnect things when servicing them; no need to risk a rivet gun actuating, or your squeezer actuating when you aren't expecting it to do so.
8. Have lots of little bins and compartments around for rivets, clecos, etc.

There's probably 100 other little details I learned, but we'll call that a good summary for now. Our local EAA chapter (Chapter 33) technical counselor graciously offered to come out and check out my shop, kit, and use of tools - so I'm looking forward to his visit to identify any areas I can improve on, and make sure I'm starting things off right.

  Mar 06, 2021     Inventory and Organize Practice Kits Category: Practice Kit

I have a number of practice kits - the freebie cell phone holder from Cleaveland Tools, and then the toolbox and light-up sign from Vans. Finally unpacked them all, inventoried everything (good news, it's all here) and started printing up some organization boxes for the mess of rivets this comes with.

  Mar 05, 2021     Cell Phone Kit       Category: Practice Kit

Finally had the workshop in a good enough state that I could start work on some of the practice kits. It took me well over 4 hours, but I got the cell phone kit all assembled with no major errors. It's safe to say my skills are beyond novice, but hey - that's what practice is all about. Some important things I learned while doing this:
-Squeezer setup: Takes a bit to get used to this (pneumatic squeezer) but it's awesome once you do
-Rivet set: One got stuck in the squeezer ram, thankfully it was just a matter of pulling the ram, chucking it in the vice, and yanking it out with a pliers. Probably took 100lbs of force to get it out, but I'll work on the spring steel retention ring (rough burr), and it should be good to go from there
-The arbor on my grinder wasn't a standard size, some quick design work yielded a 3D printed bushing that fits my 16mm shaft of on the grinder, to the 19mm bore on the 3M wheel.


p.s. Not counting hours yet since this isn't the actual airplane build.

  Feb 22, 2021     Toolkit Organization       Category: Tools

After receiving my tools from Cleaveland Tool (which, by the way, has been an awesome experience so far - great quality tools, solid packaging, quick service, plus it's a local Iowa-based company too), I quickly realized that I should organize all of the dies, sets, drill bits, reamers, etc.; otherwise they were likely to get lost in drawers, etc. Since I was procrastinating doing the drywall/painting in my shop whilst waiting for my empennage to arrive and prior to starting my practice kits, I designed up a few storage trays in CAD and printed them out.