Rudder Fiberglass Take 2

A couple of afternoons of fiberglass work this weekend.  One thing about this stage of the build, there's a lot of elbow grease with very little to show.  I threw in the towel with the bottom rudder cap and ordered a replacement.  The first one was such a bad fit that I had to cut and cut and then lay down new fiberglass, trying to get the shape to fit.  I probably could have gotten there eventually, but it was starting to be such a mess that I decided to try again.  The new piece arrived today.  Thankfully it's a much better fit!  It still needs a lot of manipulation, but not not nearly as much as the previous one.  I cut out the area around the rudder horn and trimmed the sides to fit up against the skins.  Since the holes had already been drilled in the aluminum when I match drilled to the first fiberglass cap, I had to draw reference lines onto the skins to help locate the new hole locations.  That worked out fine.  Once I had them drilled I used the heat gun to heat up the fiberglass enough to get it to take a better shape.  I'm learning that the heat treatment is just a normal part of making Van's fiberglass fit.

The cutout around the rudder horn was not as hard to get right as it was the first time, but it's still a difficult area to fit.  It looks like you could just mark the fiberglass where it meets the rudder horn and cut it, but since the rudder is at an angle, it rotates up into position as you slide it in place.  So you can't cut 90 degrees to the edge based on where it looks like the horn hits (if you did, the bottom of the cutout would be off by a good 1/4"+ once rotated into position).  It sounds simple, but man is it a pain to get right.  The other problematic area is the small ears at the front.  Those are supposed to slide up and over the rudder spar.  They don't even come close to doing that because Van's mold doesn't allow for room for the angle of the spar.  It took a lot of heat and gentle bending to create a jog and a twist that would at least allow it to sort of slide over the spar.  I haven't decided how to deal with it yet - there's not supposed to be a rivet here, but I think the only way to keep these ears from sticking out is to rivet them in place.