HS work and started VS

Good stuff tonight. I finished drilling the left side of the HS, removed the skin, and put the assembly aside. I had to steal some clecoes from the outboard side to finish drilling the inboard ribs.

I don't want to start the right side until my replacement rib arrives (should get here on May 14th), so I put the HS on hold and started work on the VS.

I can't believe how quickly the VS went together compared to the HS. I fluted the ribs and assembled the skeleton.

Then I attached the skin.

It was getting late so I thought I'd stop there. However, I after reading a post on VAF I thought it would be a good time to organize my hardware. I purchased a plastic storage container a long time ago specifically for this.

You can see I've organized the rivets by type, diameter, and length. The pop rivets are just in random order along the top, and I found it nearly impossible to figure out a good organization scheme for the various nuts and bolts that were merely labeled "Misc Empennage Hardware". Oh well, it's still better than looking for hardware in little paper bags.

Time spent: 5 hours (20.5 total)

Fit left side HS skin

Tonight I made progress fitting the left skin of the HS to the skeleton. The main goal is to match drill the forward spar and the inboard most ribs. I started by match drilling the ribs to the spars, disassembling the pieces, deburring and removing metal chips to ensure a good fit, then reassembling the skeleton. Then I peeled back the plastic from one of the HS skins (which is from this point forward the left skin) and placed it around the skeleton. I then clecoed every other hole.

Then I flipped the part over and clecoed the other side. Here is my technical councelor checking my work:

Once I had the skin clamped down as much as I could, I marked the hole locations on the two most inboard ribs (these ribs are not prepunched), I fluted them, marked the center line, and then clamped the main rib in place to be match drilled. I then match drilled the holes in the forward spar that are not prepunched.

By the time I had finished I had no more 3/32" clecoes left. Looks like I'll be needing some more sooner than later!

Time spent: 1.5 hours (15.5 total)

More HS work, and my first oops

Tonight I continued work on the horizontal stabilizer. Stacey helped me flute some ribs, and I started attaching the ribs to the spars. Here are a couple of neat shots of the structure with most of the ribs in place:

I marked and drilled the left side most inboard main rib, and I was fairly satisfied with the result. However, when I marked the corresponding right side rib, I had the part flipped around. The end result is that I have two ribs drilled for the left side. Here is a shot of the correct drilling pattern:

And here is a shot of my oops:

I don't see any way of safely using this part (besides maybe as a spare left side if I screw that part up somehow), so I ordered a new one from Vans. I can keep moving forward with the HS a little while longer, but at some point I'll probably have to put it on hold until the new rib arrives. While I'm waiting I can always move on to the vertical stabilizer.

Time spent: 1 hour (14 total)

Bandsaw wars and more HS work

Today I set out to purchase a bandsaw. Unfortunately my closest Home Depot was out of stock, so I picked one up at Lowes.

WARNING: Do not buy this product!

The first thing I noticed when I opened the box is that the little fence it comes with was snapped in two pieces. When I did set it up, the side door did not want to close properly, and then when we turned it on, the motor just buzzed and the overload switch tripped. What a POS!!! After about 30 minutes of making sure it wasn't my fault (had I missed something in the setup?) I returned the POS to Lowes and drove to the next closest Home Depot to pick up a Ryobi.

Wow, what a difference! Setup was a snap, no broken parts, and the motor spun up when I flipped the ON switch. What a concept!

With my new toy I went back to work tapering those reinforcement bars:

Using two blocks of wood, a rubber mallet, and a digital level, I put a 6° bend on each side of the reinforcement bars. I finished the bend relief notches in the front HS spar channels with a precision sanding bit in the Dremel, bent the ends of those to 6°, and then clecoed the front HS spar in place.

It almost looks like an airplane part:

I notched the flanges on two of the ribs to fit around the reinforcement bars:

Then I started fluting ribs. Here is a before and after of one of the leading edge ribs:

Time Spent: 4 hours (13 total)

HS spars

Today I disassembled the spars and completed all those steps I skipped yesterday. I polished the rear spar reinforcement bars, matched drilled those in place, enlarged the holes where the main ribs will attach, and match drilled all of the elevator hinge brackets.

After that I moved on to the front spar assembly. I match drilled the two bars of angle to the spar channels. The two reinforcement bars need to be trimmed and then bent to a 6° angle. I was hoping to do that today, but I ran into a little snag. After 15 minutes with the bench grinder and a hand file, this is how far I got:

You can see I did make progress, but I probably have another 15-20 minutes to go just on that corner, and there are eight corners in all. At that rate it will take four hours to trim these parts. I decided to hold off until I can pick up a bandsaw (maybe tomorrow).

So I moved on to the next step which is to notch out some of the spar flange. According to the manual, the spars are the same ones that the RV-8 uses, but need to be modified slightly to fit the RV-7. I had to notch the flanges back to about where the 6° bend will go. I then had to make a relief notch for the bend. You can see the rough teardrop shape of the relief notches in the following photos:

Time Spent: 4 hours (9 total)

Gentlemen... start your engines!

I have actual progress to report tonight. I actually assembled something! It only took me a week!

Before I could get started I needed to pick up a scotch brite wheel for my grinder. I bought something at the local hardware store, but it turned out to be not what I wanted at all. I found an industrial supply store (Abbot Treat Industrial) that carries 3M products and is not far from home. They were super friendly, and they even opened the store up for me when I showed up five minutes after they had already closed. I plan to stop back in soon to shop around - there's lots of neat stuff in there.

Anyways, armed with my new scotch brite wheel, I went to work on the HS-609PP rear spar reinforcement bars. I rouned the ends and rounded the edges that rest against the corner of the rear spars. Then I clecoed the reinforcement bars to the spars.

Why stop there? I then attached the main ribs, final drilled the elevator hinge brackets and attached them, and then I drilled the HS-411BPP bracket to the HS411-APP bracket and the VA-146 bearing. This is the "elevator junction" which will connect to the elevator horns (you'll see).

Why stop there? Once I was done with the rear spar, I started on the front spar. I clecoed both front spar channels to the HS-710 and HS-714 reinforcement angle.

Here are the front and rear spar assemblies so far:

Here is a set of elevator hinge brackets clecoed in place:

Here is the "elevator junction" clecoed in place:

Here are the reinforcement angles clecoed to the front spar channels:

Don't let these pictures fool you. It's not as far along as it might appear. I have done very little match drilling, almost no deburring, and no dimpling or priming. It has a long way to go before I can start driving rivets, but that's ok. It feels great just to make any progress at all.

Time Spent: 2 hours (5 total)

And the winner is...

It's AZKO all the way! Granted the prep time is longer and the chemicals are noxious, but man I'm getting a much better finish with AZKO than I am with the self etching primer. Here are two siffeners from the practice project. The dark gray one in front was primed using the self etching primer and the gold one in back was primed with AZKO. Both pieces were alumiprepped and alodized.

Please excuse the blurry photo, but here you can see the self etchingprimer scratches off easily with a fingernail:

This is one of the reinforcement places. These were the last parts I primed. This is pretty close to what the finish should look like. Very light coat, just enough to make the part that distinctive gold color. I was holding the part by the corners which is why they are not covered well. I still have to put together a chickenwire spray and drying rack.

I'm sure there are as many opinions on the topic as there are builders - and then some. For me, it's the three step Alumiprep, Alodine, AZKO. Sure it may slow down the process a bit, but I can't argue with the finished result. I'll still keep some self etching primer around for the little one-off jobs.

I'm going to try and alter the build process a bit in an attempt to reduce the number of batches I need to prime. I would love to complete the tail kit with only one or two days of priming. That means getting all the subassemblies fitted, dimpled, and deburred before I drive any rivets so that I can prime all of the parts in bigger batches. I'm not positive on the feasibility of this approach, but I'm going to give it a try.