Vertical Stabilizer Complete!
Seth and I had a very productive day today. We decided to finish the vertical stabilizer since the replacement parts arrived via UPS on Thursday. Van’s service is great and they are so helpful. We had to order a new front spar and rib for the VS due to a botched attempt at drilling out a couple of bad rivets.
We got an early start on Saturday and began reassembly of the vertical stabilizer around 0730. We had to reassemble the VS in order to match drill the new spar and rib. After that, we took everything apart, and finished the 3 D’s (drill, deburr, dimple). We used the DRDT-2 dimpler for the VS skin and the pneumatic squeezer for the ribs. After that, I washed the parts to prepare them for primer. I had previously used Mar-Hyde primer on the VS, so some parts were already primed. I decided to wash them as well. I shouldn’t have done that. The primer began to slough off of the parts. I knew that the primer was not “water safe”, but had not applied the primer sealer to those parts yet. So… I got to strip the primer off the existing parts and re-prime them. After everything was dry, I applied a sealer as recommended by the manufacturer.
We broke for lunch and a little shopping since Seth was in town. After returning to the Skunk Works we started reassembling the skeleton for the VS. We riveted the ribs to the front spar, clecoed the skin on, then began to rivet the skin to the spar and ribs. showed Seth how to rivet flush rivets with the rivet gun and pneumatic squeezer.
We took a break around 1900 for and early Father’s Day dinner, then got back to work riveting.We finished the VS right after 2100.
Riveting skins and dimpling is a lot faster when you have a helper. Seth was a fantastic helper today and I thoroughly enjoyed his company.
Total time: 7.5 hrs, Hobbs: 65.2
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.