After the stiffeners were finally done, we started the rudder skeleton. This was pretty straight forward, aside from figuring out how the rudder horn is supposed to layer together with the lower rib. The plans just don't show the layout in enough detail to determine if the rudder horn goes on top of or underneath the rib flange.
After some back and forth (and looking at a few online build logs), we figured out that the rudder horn sits on top of the rib flange. In hindsight, that makes sense given that there is a shim behind the rest of the rudder horn, which is there to make up the thickness of the rib flange. The top of the horn had to be trimmed down a touch and rounded over in order to fit with the rib flange bend.
Here, the plans call for the stiffeners to be riveted to the skins before proceeding to the next steps. I'd rather do all of the priming at once though, so we decided to just cleco the skins on without the stiffeners.
The tip rib and the counterbalance rib at the top of the rudder were a bear to get right! The material is much thicker than the ribs of the horizontal stabilizers, so it's much more important to flute the ribs as close to perfect as possible. We had to go back and forth with this a few times. The ribs are so stiff that if the holes don't line up, bending them in place is not nearly as easy as with the previous ribs. This was probably the hardest fit of anything done so far.
The skins have a small tab that fits around the rudder horn. This was a little too snug for my liking, so we opened it up a bit on each side.
