Tailcone

Completed through page 10-8 step 2.

Tailcone

Completed through page 10-7 step 6. Accidentally had two j-channels stacked into the same spot when match-drilling the lower stiffeners. Need to re-order F-1047B.

Tailcone

Completed through page 10-5 step 4.

Elevators Complete!

Finished the elevators!

Elevators

Completed through page 9-18 step 6.

Elevators

Riveted elevator trailing edges, cleaned, re-clamped

Elevators

Completed elevators through page 9-17 step 10. Also finished 9-14 step 10. Prosealed both elevator trailing edges.

Elevator Assembly Continues

Completed elevators through page 9-17 step 7.

Elevator Assembly Continues

Completed through page 9-16 step 2, still need to proseal and rivet trailing edge.

Elevators - Joining Skins

Took a few days off from building, but went full steam ahead today and made a lot of progress! We started with rolling the opposite skin (L-bottom and R-top) over their respective assemblies. This was done in a similar fashion to how we joined the rudder skins, although unfortunately we didn't take pictures of the process this time. When complete, we had the elevator skins joined within their internal rib structure, but the skins were not riveted to the spars yet. In order to continue, a special bucking bar had to be made per the plans:

Jumping at any excuse to make this many sparks, Mike makes a similar bucking bar to the one called out in step 9-12.3 out of raw steel stock.

Hot off the press, the new bucking bar is put to work inside the confines of the R elevator skin.

After riveting the rear spar to the skins (except for the areas called out to skip in the plans to accomodate the trim tab hinges) the front spar was riveted in:

Now we're starting to have something that looks like an elevator!!

Elevator Skins and Rear Spar

Continued assembling the elevators tonight, starting with the back-riveting of each rib half to the corresponding skins. The rib halves have a larger and a smaller part, and between the right and left elevators the larger part goes on either the upper or the lower skin, such that all flanges point outwards. The back-riveting process is briefly detailed below:

First, the rivets are placed into the holes (8 rows of 8 rivets, on each of the 4 skins) and then covered with rivet tape. Rivet tape only provides adhesive on the edges where the red color is, and is simply clear cellophane in the middle. This allows for holding the rivet in place, but prevents the adhesive from interfering with the rivet itself.

The skin is then turned over (with the tape holding the rivets in their holes) allowing the part being riveted, in this case the rib half, to be placed over the protruding rivets. Then, the rivet gun is used to set the rivets using a back-rivet attachment.

Next, the trim reinforcement plates were attached to the skins using the same back-rivet technique:

The trim reinforcement plate riveted into place

Lastly, the rear spar was riveted into the L-upper and R-lower skins (the skins that had the larger of the two rib halves on them). In the following picture, the front spar is shown also set into position, but it is not yet riveted into place.