September 2010 Archives

Bending the rudder

After a busy week I got back into the workshop today. Bought a couple of door hinges for 30 cent a piece, including the screws. Not too bad. I also found 1/8" dowels in a model shop. Equipped like this I built a bending brake from 2x4s which I still had at home, taped the dowels in the back of the rudder to prevent it from being crushed, and started bending.

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The other builders are right. Boy, this takes quite some force! It didn't take long until I attached two large clamps to the brake:

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When I built the brake I had left a 1/8" gap between the lumber, but now I think that's too wide. It was hard to get the last bit bent, even though I took out the dowels. Nevertheless, in the end it worked out fine. Looks already like a rudder:

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Closeup of the trailing edge. Good enough for government work:

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Wings ordered

Lots of work at work this week, but I also managed to order my wings. I will also get some new tools with them. More clecos, tube bender, flaring tool, a real angle drill ... It took me several hours to get everything sorted out.

More rivets

Two productive days! Yesterday I had my first large rivet session. I riveted the stiffeners to the rudder skin. Backriveting is the best option here, so the first step is to insert rivets in the holes and fix them with tape. I use Scotch Magic Tape -- much cheaper than rivet tape and works just as good.

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Then you place the skins with the manufactured rivet heads down on a heavy flat chunk of steel and form the shop heads with the rivet gun. This is how the skin looked afterwards; it really is a different beast now, gone is all the floppiness:

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Then I assembled the VS rear spar. Ready for riveting:

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I taped over the holes where the ribs will be attached, so that I don't accidentally put rivets in:

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All done, gotta love that pneumatic squeezer!

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In the lower part of the spar flush rivets are used. That's where the VS will be attached to the fuselage, and universal rivet heads would interfere:

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This afternoon I first riveted the VS ribs to the front spar:

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I told you that I got some runs on the first ribs I primes ...

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Now I could cleco and then rivet the VS skin to the front spar and the ribs. I love that tungsten bar!!!

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I drilled out four rivets on the VS. On two I slipped with the bucking bar (see the picture below) and two were simply too short. Van's calls for AN426AD3-4 rivets where the front spar and the main rib at the bottom meet, but there's no way to get a proper shop head with that. I ended up using -4.5 and that worked fine.

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Look ma, no clecos! (Except on the rear spar, that is. I can't close any parts before someone official has looked at them.)

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First rivets

Just a few minutes in the workshop tonight. I squeezed the rivets on the VA-146 hinge bearing which is sitting between the two HS-411 brackets. Van's calls for -5 rivets, and adds with an exclamation mark that this is the correct length. Well, those rivets do look too short, but I measured the shop heads after squeezing, and sure enough they are within MIL-specs (min. height .050" and min. diameter .163" for 1/8" rivets).

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I will spend some more time this evening figuring out what to order with my wing kit. I want to save shipping, so I asked on VAF what other people typically needed for their wings.

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This page is an archive of entries from September 2010 listed from newest to oldest.

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