Today started out with a trip to San Antonio for primer and stuff. More on that later. Once back home I continued working on the rudder skeleton. I put that shim I made yesterday in its home, between the rudder horn and the main rudder spar. Putting that bottom part of the rudder together for drilling was interesting. In the picture you can see the 5 parts that all have to be in their respective places to come together correctly, from left to right, a reinforcing plate, the main spar, bottom rib, the shim, and the rudder horn. I had to try to hold them all together nearly correct with one hand while weilding the cleco pliers and trying to get a cleco in a hole with the other. It all worked out though :)
And here's the top of the rudder with the top rib and counterweight rib in place. At this point all (both) the ribs were straighted and fluted, as you can see.
More stuff going together on the bottom. As stated in the assembly procedure, I had to remove some extra metal from that reinforcing bracket between the horn and the bottom rib.
Remember yesterday when I mentioned that I had made 2 shims because I messed up the holes in the first? Well Van's ships a 40" long 1.325" wide piece of 0.032 sheet for the shim and for the two 18" long rudder attach strips. Well, 18+18+3.5=39.5". But I had cut two 3.5" pieces out already.. Oops. So I looked around for another piece of scrap sheet metal I could cut this from. Nothing long enough except for 2 things. The front HS spar I misdrilled or the defective HS skin. I chose the skin. So now there is a chunk missing out of the corner of it. I knew that this giant piece of scrap would come in handy some day, I jsut didn't figure so soon. Hopefully Van's doesn't want it back, or I'll have to explain the chunk missing :) Anyways here those two attach strip before they were match drilled to the bottom rib.
Here is the rudder all stuck together for final drilling. It's so shiney you can even see the fine gentleman taking the picture! :) I deviated slightly from the procedure here, as I didn't have my big skin dimpler yet and therefore couldn't have riveted on the stiffeners yet. Even without the stiffeners in it, it held together quite nicely and was in perfect shape (just not nearly stiff enough to do its job).
At the end of the day I had it all disassembled again and had all the parts, except skins, deburred. Here are the majority of them waiting for tomorrow's ride on the scothbrite wheel for final edge smoothing.
This morning I made a 3 hour round trip to San Antonio to get my primer and prep chemicals. I'm not really looking forward to using this nasty, carcinogenic, toxic crap, but you gotta do what you gotta do. My feelings for Colortone Paint better now. They just seemed horribly busy and understaffed, so I can understand why my email didn't get answered, but Eddie did mention getting it when I called yesterday. He remembered me because I don't think he hears from too many people building their own planes, so that was the topic while he was ringing me up today. The prices for the Sherwin Williams mil-spec primer were pretty decent, and the trip down saved my $40+ hazmat shipping too. He got some Alodine from one of his other stores, as he didn't have any there when I called yesterday, so that was cool. He didn't have the prices for the Alodine and Alumiprep when I called, and I was in for a little shock today. The prices were $45 for the alodine and $57 for the alumiprep! Completely rediculous. I could get the PPG versions of it in Austin for $25/gallon each, and Spruce has it for under $20 each. So when he told me the prices I told him that I could get it for $20 each. To my surprise he gave me the alumiprep for $20 since it was a previous special order and didn't get picked up, so it wasn't something he normally had in stock. And he called to find out what their cost for the Alodine (actually DuPont 226S, same thing) was, and gave it to me for cost, which was almost half of the original price! So here it is in all its glory. From left to right, Alumiprep 33, DuPont 226S (Alodine), Thinner (CM00702901), Epoxy Primer (CM00724400), and Epoxy Primer Adduct (a.k.a. catalyst, a.k.a. hardener) (CM00724114).
