Tonight I was finally able to finish up my elevators. Been a long time coming. Some pics of the finishing up process of attaching the trim tabs to the main structure.

 

I bought a new compressor to give me some more capacity and be a little quieter seeing it’s in the garage with me. I decided to get a 2 stage, 60 gallon model from Harbor Freight. It refills very quickly now and is much better when running the air drill or spraying primer.

Since the last post, I’ve made a lot of progress on the Elevators. Below are some pics documenting the process.

I had a nice day to move the priming outside for this round. I used an old grill top from my pig roaster that I never use to provide a better backdrop for the spraying. Previously, smaller parts would really move around, flip over, etc… I figured it was because I was spraying against a hard surface and not something that the air from the spray gun could blast through. Happy with the results. The setup is shown below with all of the parts laid out (minus the skins)

Various pictures of initial riveting of the spar and spar stiffeners, trim access stiffener and nutplates, stiffeners back-riveted to the skins, and pop riveting the ribs in some tight quarters.

A video of me using the special RV-10 Emp bucking bar that I bought with my toolkit to rivet the rear spars

Most riveting done.

My rudder trailing edge came out okay, but I wasn’t 100% happy with how the joining of the skins came out using the VHB tape. Seeing the foam ribs are attached to the skins with Proseal, I decided I would also use the proseal for the trailing edge as well to see how it goes and compares with the VHB.

 

I also decided to use the steel bars I have and match drill them to the trailing edge holes so the clecos end up holding everything tight to a straight bar.

I then spent some time riveting the trim covers and trim attachment brackets together, along with marking and trimming the counterbalance weights.

 

Now to wait a few days for the Proseal to cure. In the meantime I’ll start working on the trim tabs.

Over the course of the week and weekend, I was able to debur all the Elevator parts. There are a lot of them! I also started dimpling things.. up until I broke my male 3/32″ dimple die. UGH! I use Cleavland’s tight fit dimple fixture, and a rivet set to hold the die in my rivet gun. I did’t think I was off center or anything, but somehow the male pilot of the dimple die broke off. So I’ve ordered a couple of replacements. I’ve asked a local friend if he has one I can borrow, seeing I’m mostly stuck needing to finish up all the dimpling prior to priming and riveting the structure together.

While deburring one of the skins, I managed to push my cordless drill off the bench with my 2.5mm Ezburr bit in it. Needless to say, the Ezburr bit didn’t fair well. 😦

So today, I dimpled any 1/8″ holes and did all the countersinking needed to some holes on the top of the rear spars and the trailing edge wedges. I also prepped the skins for the foam ribs used on the trailing edges by marking their positions and snuffing up the metal with sandpaper for better adhesion.

Below is a time lapse video of me dimpling one of the four elevator skins.

Some pics of progress on the Elevators. Once you debur a bunch of parts, the skeleton starts to take shape pretty quickly.

I was a little worried about bending the tabs on the skins, but following the procedure on the plans worked really well.

Pictures of the progress.