Okay, I said I was going to build the vertical stabilizer first, but then I got to those @#$% AD4 rivets in the VS spar. I was resisting the purchase of a pneumatic squeezer, but that only lasted till about the third one of of those suckers. I guess I could hit them with the rivet gun, but I'd just rather squeeze 'em, so pneumatic it is.
So, while I wait on my rebuilt pneumatic squeezer to arrive from the Yard Store, I switched to the horizontal stabilizer. I figure I can get some prep work done there in the meantime. Here I've deburred and polished out the milling marks from the HS rear spar reinforcement bars:
…and match-drilled them to the rear spars:
Drilled the rivet holes for the center elevator bearing:
And, since I must wait on the squeezer to smash those rivets too, it's on to the front HS spar reinforcement angles. Drilled them to the front spars, then marked and cut the tapered sections. Not shown is the half-hour with the hacksaw and vixen file, plus bad language, that it took to get them looking so nice:
Then the ears on the reinforcement angles get bent to exactly 6 degrees to accomodate the sweepback of the front spars. The manual calls for you to clamp the ears in between wood blocks and beat on them with a hammer, but I found the aluminum was soft enough that I could just clamp the parts at the bend line in a padded vise and bend the ears by hand.
Note the aircraft-quality angle bending template.
