Empennage - Rudder - Day 3

Short day of work today. Finished dimpling the remaining rudder skin and then Sarah helped re-dimple the VS skin with the new hammer. It's hard to tell the difference unless you test-fit a rivet in the hole. After re-dimpling the rivet clearly sits flush in there, where beforehand some of the holes didn't let it quite fully set into place. Lesson learned! :-)

After dimpling, we did the typical acetone wash and priming routine. I used a little less primer this time than on the VS, only really focusing on the metal-metal contact points and then a lighter dusting elsewhere to conserve weight. This method might only conserve a few pounds at most throughout the whole plane, but hey, everything counts!

Tomorrow I'm going to try and button up the VS, and at least rivet together the skeleton of the rudder... should be an exciting day!

 The rudder skeleton after priming

The two rudder skins after priming.