29 Dec 07 - Primed and Riveted the Rudder
- 4.0 Hours
I shot primer on all of the rudder parts. That
took about an hour with all of the cleanup. I let the parts dry for the majority
of the day, and then in the evening I started the riveting process.
The first componenet to be riveted on the rudder is the tip rib.
The three aft rivets are left out at this stage because they will be riveted to
the rudder skin. You can see here where I dimpled the tooling hole and had to flatten
it out.
Next you rivet the nutplate reinforcement plates and nutplates onto the spar. Remember
that the shop head should be on the side of the thickest part, which in this case
is the reinforcements.
In cases where the two parts are of even thickness, the orientation of the rivets
is unimportant.
Next the rudder skeleton is assembled.
Here you can see the rudder horn, bottom rib, and nutplate. I don't have any pictures
of riveting the horn to R-710, but a longeron yoke is the only way to set these
rivets with a squeezer.
Once the skeleton is done, all that's left is to attach the skin. The squeezer is
accessible to all rivets here.
I had to use a combination of standard yoke, 4" no hole, and longeron yoke to reach
all of the rivets.
The only blind rivets in the rudder (besides the leading edge) are here, in the
trailing bottom edge.
This is as far as I got tonight. I need to attach the counterweight, bend the leading
edge and rivet it, and install the rod-end bearings.
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