Rudder Riveting Has Begun!

 So now that the priming is done, I have begun riveting the rudder together.  It began with the rudder horn and base pieces for the rudder.  This included riveting my first nutplate on which was neat.  I always contemplate which direction to put the rivets as the plans don't show it.  I know they tell you to put the manufactured head on the thicker piece, but many times the two pieces of metal are the same, so it is strictly just appearance?  I looked at a few other builders online and it seems like many times it didn't matter.

The rudder horn was pretty straightforward with the squeezer.  The squeezer is so nice to use, especially when doing multiple rivets of the same size.  You slowly tighten up the first one, and once you figure out the right depth, its rapid fire to get the rest done.  It easily repeats the precision of the first one and you can bang out a whole line rather quick.  If you have a second hand to remove the clecos and pop rivets in, it can be extremely fast.  

When I got to the rudder spar, I did have to drill out on rivet which I was not happy with.  The rivet was set and looked like it squeezed one side more than the other.  I am not sure if this is just squeezer being misplaced or not level perfectly.  I have to be a bit more careful to make sure I am dead on lined up as I go.

Rudder Horn and Spar Riveted

Rudder Skin Primer Removal (Oops!)

In other news I had explained my oopsy during the priming session in the last post.  I had broken the rudder trailing edge wedge and accidentally primed the entire skins.  My research showed I should have left the little edge unprimed to allow for better cohesion between the two skins, wedge, and proseal.  So I spoke with my tech advisor and he advised two options, first was to try scratching it off with bare scotchbrite.  I thought about this and remembered I had the scotchbrite wheel on the drill bit, its about a 1 inch wheel.  I took this and was happily surprised how the primer came off fairly easily.  However, it took me awhile and is very difficult to be exact as you go.

Scotchbrite Wheel Trial

So above is the piece I tried to clean up using the drill mounted wheel.  It really didn't go that great where I'd want to continue doing it for both skins.  It's a long piece and will take a really long time.  Option 2 presented was to get a can of MEK and use that as a solvent to help rub it off using scotchbrite by hand.  I am thinking of trying that option now as it might be easier to do.  It doesn't help that the dimples are a bit interesting to work around.  I will report on how this goes next week once I get some MEK and give it a try.  In the meantime, I am going to continue with getting ready to back rivet the skin stiffeners and get things ready to mount.  I am looking forward to my first back riveting and pull rivets on this coming up soon.