Riveted the VS skin onto the skeleton. VS all done (except the fibreglass tips, which come later).

Set up the paint gun and primed the VS skin and the Left rudder skin and stiffeners.

Finished off the edges of the VS skin, and dimpled it ready for priming.

Deburred the left Rudder stiffeners.

I have decided to press on without a longeron yoke for my squeezer. The rivets I wanted them for can still be squeezed with the standard yoke I just need to be a bit more careful as the moving end of the squeezer (plunger?) will be on the manufactured head and hard to see so there’s a chance of messing them up.

It worked out pretty well except for 2 rivets in the VS rear spar which I had to drill out and replace. No drama, they won’t be the last and I was quite easy to do.

 

Had a big day on the project today. Finished all the prep work on the VS and HS parts ready for priming except for the VS skin. I wanted to start setting up to paint and figured I already had enough parts to manage.

The edges of the HS skins needed to be smoothed and polished. First off I filed them with a fine flat file to remove the bumps left from the shearing at the factory, then ran the small grooved scotchbrite wheel down them with the die grinder. Same process I had used for the spar channels. Next all those holes needed to be deburred. This is a pretty tedious job and I’m not 100% happy with the results I’m getting with the debur tool I have. There seems to be some very slight chattering occurring. I quick search on Vansairforce shows I’m not the only one not happy with this tool. I have ordered a single hole debur bit to replace it but the one I have got will do for now.

I then dimpled the skins using the pneumatic squeezer for the edges and the DRDT-2 for the rest. This was a quick job with these two tools.

The HS and VS ribs were all prepped up ready for primer too.

I set up my paint booth (4 $2.50 tarpaulins from Bunnings!) in the garage and cleaned all the parts with acetone. The cleaning process also removes my sharpie pen markings so from here on I needed to keep the left and right parts separated.

I made a bunch of wire hooks to hang the parts onto the painting rack with and the primed them in batches. This was the first time I have used a 2 part paint system. It’s pretty nasty stuff so I was covered up from head to toe and wore respirator and goggles. The primer was easy to mix and the gun I had seemed to suit it well. Results got better as I worked through the batches. Little bit of orange peel on some bits where I layed it on a bit too heavy. Also, a mist coat first definitely helps. I didn’t bother practicing on anything first as this is just primer and it’s on the inside of the plane so finish is not important - no one will ever see it.

After I had cleaned up the paint stuff and had dinner, I just had to go and rivet something together to I setup the rear HS spar and reinforcing bars. I remembered a tip to orientate these rivets so the manufactured head in towards the rear. This makes it easier to rivet the back row of rivets on the skins as there is not much room to get your squeezer in. Unfortunately, due to the way the spar flange lies, I can’t rivet these this way round with my 3″ yoke. I need a longeron yoke which I don’t have. I’ll probably buy one one day but in the meantime I’m going to try and borrow one locally just for this job.
So with no luck on with the rear spar I moved on to the front one. managed to squeeze a couple of rivets there, but will need the longeron yoke for some of those too. Bugger!