First Mistake
It was bound to happen eventually and I am glad it happened on a small piece like the Vertical Stabilizer, but I made my first "oops". I had successfully finished match drilling and deburring all of the spar caps for the Vertical Stabilizer. I had gotten to the countersinking section the spar doubler and misread the "Except the hole above the VS-1010-L" section. I started to counter sink and ended up counter-sinking the set of holes that were supposed to be left alone. I might of been able to make it work, however I decided I wanted to do it right. Luckily, the part with shipping was only about $45 to replace and ship to NY. I guarantee I taped off and marked those holes immediately before starting any drilling.
VS Continued
So last week after returning from Airventure, I was eager to jump back into the build. I didn't find as much time as I hoped at first, kids being home in the summer makes it difficult to get time, but I eventually got some. I completed the "remake" of the match drilling and countersinking on the rear spar doubler. Then I carefully began to deburr and round out the ribs of the stabilizer. The directions and all the videos I watched emphasize rounding off the front ribs very well to avoid any dents or printing onto the skin at final assembly. I went to town with my deburring wheel and got some nice edges.
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| VS Ribs assembled for the first time. |
The part is finally beginning to look like something of an actual part now. It took a little trial and error to get comfortable with the ribs. I tooled around with the 1 inch deburr wheel, a metal file, the yellow handle debur tool from Cleaveland (with the sharp edge), and the big deburring wheel. I figured out what works and what doesn't work for me at least. At Airventure, there was some discussion by different people about how much to deburr. It seemed like many of the pros felt some people overdo the deburring process. I know on "Missile 29's" videos, he went pretty crazy on his VS and had noted he probably overdid it himself. I made sure to remove any large bumps on the edges and ran the deburr wheel/tools around the other edges quickly. I couldn't feel any major burrs and went with it.
After I did the match drilling on the ribs and finished deburring, it was time to bust out my first skin. The Vertical Stabilizer skin is a pretty awkward skin to work on my little benches. I got it up on a chair and spent a few minutes trying to simply get the blue protective film off. It was finally completed and time to slip the skin over the substructure. A lot of the videos I had watched all mentioned the skin was pretty snug and most had difficulty at first getting it on. I had read the entire section and first tried to do one side at a time. This proved to be a decent start, but I quickly realized you needed access to the ribs to "manipulate" some small corrections to line things up.
As a result, I then decided to try and follow the rivet order and start in the middle at the front of the VS1014 rib. This was the key, but lining up that very first hole was a pain. I recommend getting one side on and then standing the structure as in the picture above. Put downward pressure onto the top of the skin pushing the skin "into" the structure. As long as the rib is lined up right, the hole quickly should come into view. Once those two holes are in, everything else was pretty easy, just move in straight lines. It only took about 90 minutes of trial and error to figure that out and get it all cleco'd up. It was getting late and the kids don't show any sympathy for my late hour build sessions.
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| VS Skin completely cleco'd to the substructure. |
My next session will include the match drilling of the skin, deburring all the holes and ribs, and my first dimpling session. I am looking forward to getting that done and then final assembly of the Vertical Stabilizer.
