Section 7 : Complete!

It's crazy to think that only a year ago I started this process of building.  Despite some breaks in progress for work, family, and other things, I am amazed that we have completed two sections at this point.  Now that we have finalized much of the "Workshop" setup, Storage arrangements, and time allocation, its time to get the ball rolling.

So back to the headline, the Rudder is done!  We last left off where we completed the trailing edge, mounted the counterweight, and now we finished the leading edge.  The leading edge is where the two skins are rolled together to allow the rudder to maintain its aerodynamic efficiency.  Section 5 which describes many of the basic techniques that are used in the build has a rather small paragraph about how to roll the skins together.  It essentially says to duct tape the skin to a pipe, roll downwards, and keep pressure on the spar.  After making the basic roll, you manipulate the skin to finish the roll.  After rolling it, you match drill the holes, debur, and rivet together.  It really makes it sound extremely simple, but I didn't find it as such,

Rolled Leading Edge Section

The RV-10 directions describe this step pretty simply, by telling you to do it in sections and use a 1.25" pipe.  That was about all the notes it provided.  When we did this at Synergy, it was on a small test kit which used a small broom stick.  It was all the same chord and didn't variate along he spar in width, the RV-10 spar varies along the length.  So suffice to say the practice kit wasn't as realistic as I would of hoped.   I tried the tape with a pipe, used a broom, and than man handled it a bit.  It ended up coming out pretty decently, and I was able to cleco the skins together.  I let them all sit for a little while in the form of the rolled joint, and then drilled them.  It was definitely not as simple or smooth as I would of expected based on some feedback online. 

Rolled Leading Edge With Cleco's

After riveting everything together, it was off to the races to clean up the skin.  I quickly wiped down all of the surfaces with some acetone to remove any oils before storage.  The Rudder is now moved into storage along with its counterpart, the Vertical Stabilizer.  I also removed the Horizontal Stabilizer parts from storage.  It was quite interesting since the Horizontal Stabilizer spars are significantly longer than the parts I have dealt with so far.  I ended up having to put them through the rear window of my pickup truck and hold onto them for the short ride home.  After some redesign of my workspace and cleanup, we are prepped to get ready to go on the horizontal stabilizer in the coming days.

Horizontal Stab Spar Ready To Go