Matt's RV-7 Project

Tonight I made a homebrew bending brake out of some 2×6 lumber and some door hinges, and used it to bend the elevator skins to their final shape.

When I had each one bent as far as it'd go with the bending brake, the open end of the skin was still bobbing in the air about an inch above the spar. Following the advice of those who've gone before me, I used hand seamers (cushioned with duct tape to avoid scratching up the skin) to gently squish along the trailing edge until the skin was resting on the spar.

I was a little worried about this whole process, but it turned out great and was a snap. Next stop looks like deburring and straightening a lot of ribs, so I think I'll quit while I'm ahead.

Back riveted the elevator stiffeners and E-615 reinforcement bracket to the elevator skins:

Today I deburred the holes and edges, and dimpled the holes, for both elevator skins. Tedious. My edge deburring method is to first use a vixen file to knock off the shear marks, then 220 and 400 grit sandpaper until the edges are smooth and all visible tooling marks are gone. It takes a while.

Then I shot some primer along the rivet lines. I think the combination of striped empennage skins along with striped ugly futon is rather fetching, don't you?

Then I primed all the elevator stiffeners and the E-615 trim reinforcement bracket. Mary came out and helped me clean parts, and to re-mark them after the acetone washes off the identifiying marks during the cleaning process.

It was way too hot for most of the day to venture into the garage/airplane factory, but after the sun went down I went out and finished deburring and dimping the elevator stiffeners. Here they are in all their glory. I'm pretty sure there are eleventy kajillion of them, or at least that what it seemed like at the time.

To avoid gouging up the stiffener webs (Do stiffeners have webs? Anyway, the part that's perpendicular the flange) I ground down one side of my female tank dimple die. I didn't have this problem with the rudder stiffeners, but the holes in the elevator stiffener flanges are just a little bit closer to the webs than they were on the rudder stiffeners. And since I have an extra female tank die I wasn't too worried about accidentally munging this one when I was grinding away at it.