Surprise surprise, still working on the right elevator. I weighed down the skins and proceeded to rivet on the bottom skins. I'm very glad I chose to drill the skin and spar for the CS 4-4 blind rivets vs solid rivets. I was able to pop rivet the spar in 10 minutes, but had I chosen mostly solid rivets, it would have easily been a couple of hours of irritation. I know some people don't like the look of pop rivets, but I really don't see what the fuss is about. Especially on the bottom side of the elevator, they're not going to be noticeable, especially since they fit flush in the dimples.
With the bottom side of the spar riveted, the counterbalance ribs were next.
There was really no easy way to rivet the spar to rib rivets. I couldn't get a squeezer on them, so I had to figure out how to buck them. By the time I'm done with the build I will have amassed quite the collection of steel bars that have been repurposed as bucking bars. A little cardboard to set the bar at the right depth and I was able to get the four rivets set.
I finished all of the counterbalance ribs and skin, leaving open the aft 3 rivets on the ribs so I could still flex the skin enough to work on the trailing edge. The wedge for the trailing edge is not pre-drilled like it was on the rudder. I drew a line 7/32" from the front edge of the wedge to line the holes in the skin up with when drilling through the wedge.
I cut the wedge to length and lined up the holes in the skin with the line on the wedge. Using the skin holes as a guide, I drilled through the wedge and other side of the skin using a wood block template made to the 84 degrees called out in the plans.
I didn't love how the skins set on the wedge when doing the rudder, so this time I rolled the skin using the edge roller from Cleaveland. This is just a pair of vice grips that have rollers on them with a very slight angle at the edge. The amount of angle it gives the skin edge is very slight, but it's supposedly enough to allow them to still be tight even with a little puckering between rivets. I'll know if it works soon enough.
Following the process I did for the rudder, I started drilling through the aluminum angle to create a straight edge that the skin and tape combo could set up on. I ran into a problem though. Everything looked great, and then I got to the last 6" of the edge. Everything that had been flat all of the sudden sprung up and bowed a 1/2" away from the angle! At first I was pretty disheartened, because it seemed like I had done everything I could do to keep things straight, but after a bit of head scratching, I think I figured out the problem. When I was drilling into the angle I didn't have the elevator weighted down to the table, which over the span of the elevator allowed the skins to slowly get pushed out of position against the wedge.
I reset and started over, this time keeping the whole elevator weighed down to the table while drilling through the angle. I should finish up with the trailing edge tomorrow. Fingers crossed it's at least incrementally better than the rudder.
