Rudder construction: 3.3 hours

Match drilled rudder skin to skeleton, deburred holes, and edge finish skin.

Fitted stiffeners to rudder skin: 7.1 hours

Spent the day riveting stiffeners to rudder skin after edge prep and skin priming. The very last rivets at the trailing edge proved to be difficult. I had to redo about six of them. The back rivet technique worked quite well!
Then I bent the trailing edge in the bending brake. Took a while but I managed to slowly massage the skin into position. I have a nice straight tailing edge. My radius might be a tad on the short side, I will have to get another set of eyes on it. No doubt it will function properly when knife edging!

Rudder skeleton: 1.7 hours

Finally got my replacement R-710. Took my time and made good cuts and mounted it to skeleton!

Finished the vertical stab: 4.8 hours

Spent the day riveting the skin to the under structure. Went well except for a few rivets that had to be replaced due to deformed heads. Some of the AN470 dome heads do not leave much room for bucking!
My riveting skills are progressing.

More vertical stab riveting: 2.4 hours

Finished riveting the rear spar and riveted ribs to the forward spar.

Vertical stab priming and assembly: 3.9 hours

Finally got all the vertical stab parts primed then riveted the rear spar flange, doubler, and brackets together.

Horizontal stabilizer complete: 2.0 hours

Finally had my visit from a technical counselor and I’m good to go!

Riveted the aft spar to stab skin after inspection to complete my first assembly!

 

Match drilled stiffeners to elevator skins: 3.0 hours

Match drilled stiffeners to elevator skins and deburred holes. This is were a pneumatic cleco gun pays great dividends!

Trimming elevator stiffeners: 5.1 hours

Cut angle to form stiffeners for both elevators. Clecoed to elevators for match drilling. Lots of cutting and edge forming!
Made a bending brake out of a 2×8 cut down the center. Hopefully it will work out well for edge bending?

Building the rudder skeleton: 2.1 hours

Clecoed reinforcement plates to spar, fabricated rudder spacer and attach strips. Enlarged bottom rod end hole.
Fluted tip rib, and match drilled counter balance skin.
Trimmed R-710 a bit too much to have proper edge distance so I have to order another!