Building has continued as of late and this past week was expected to be in the 50's and low 60's which is totally out of the norm for New York in mid winter. As such, I made a decision to make sure I was ready to prime before the super warm day yesterday. I had finished up all of the match drilling and had taken apart the rudder assembly. The last step remaining was to countersink the trailing edge wedge. Some builders reported doing this with a drill by hand, but that is a lot of holes to do. In my cleaveland kit there was a jig designed for a drill press. This allows you to setup a drill press, configure the countersink cage, and then repetitively drill through the wedge more quickly and efficiently. And the wedge is kept perfectly at the appropriate angle to drill. However, I don't own a drill press.... yet.
I had a nice gift card for Lowes leftover from Christmas and decided that it was time to put it to good use. I went to Lowes and picked up their countertop drill press from Porter Cable. I already have the band saw and grinder, so it fit in perfectly to my collection. I got it home, took some time to assemble, and was ready to start countersinking soon enough. Add in some small clamps and I had the press all rigged up and ready to go.
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| Drill Press with Trailing Edge Jig |
It took me two sessions to do, but I slowly made my way through both sides of the trailing edge wedge. This part is thin but has an important job of joining the two skins together when I do the final assembly. I took my time getting the first few holes setup and making sure they fit my test dimple plate perfectly. After fine tuning the cage, I was off to the races to finish the rest of the wedge.
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| Nice Countersink Holes |
Now that the wedge was finally countersunk, I was all ready to get started priming on Thursday. I woke up to the temperature already in the high 50's and got setup early. I used the same setup with my priming racks over the 2x8's. After getting the kids off to school, it was time to bust out the Ekoetch and start scrubbing. The etching is very time consuming and tedious work to get done, but its nice cleaning everything up. Again, its not a big deal to have lots of scratches as this helps the primer bond to the surface. The unprimed outer parts will eventually be sanded and scratched up when they are ready to paint. As long as we have no large and deep scratches, we are good to go. I have to figure out the best way to protect the skins a bit when moving them around the racks. My racks have chicken wire on top and make some small scratches.
I had one hiccup or oopsy during my etching session. One of the last pieces I etched was the trailing edge wedge. Now doing this was a mistake because we don't want to prime this as it can effect the adhesion of the Proseal when I build the rudder. But as I was scrubbing the wedge with the scotchbrite, the wedge literally snapped in my hand. The wedge is so narrow, just gentle pressure caused it to bend and snap. I now have to recut and redo the countersinking. I am not looking forward to shipping a piece of trailing edge by itself. I might wait until I order the fuselage and include it in that if I don't have enough pieces.
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| Snapped Trailing Edge |
Priming wasn't too big of a deal. I gave everything a very thorough stir and made sure to mix it well. I still like my little detail paint spray gun, but as we get into bigger assemblies, I might need something larger. I had to replace and refill the spray tank once during the session. I'd prefer to avoid doing that mid spray if I can. After everything was done, I broke it all down and got everything cleaned up. Next week I will start riveting together the rudder pieces for the final time. This section will be an introduction to back riveting and my first time using Proseal. I look forward to the new processes.
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