Sunday Feb 24
MEK'd and primed all rudder parts
Settling in with the new work load. Went from 16 hours a week to 9. Still 8 weeks from ordering the wing kit, and the elevators and trim tab should last about 6-7 weeks.
Standing guard over the newly primed rudder parts.
Flew today, maintaining instrument currency. Just passed 180 hours. Fully aware that I'm in that zone of complacency that kills too many pilots.
Saturday Feb 23
Counter sink all req parts
Finish loose dimpling
Drill and dimple #30s on aft tip of skins
Dimple skins
Wash all rudder parts
Thursday Feb 22
Dimpled main rib.
Finished dimpling tip rib with pop rivet dimpler. Thanks to Smitty for describing this. I was told that the Avery vise grip dimpler was not used enough to be worth buying, so I didn't get one. It's true that this tool isn't used very much, but it's indispensible for about 10 dimples on the rudder ribs.
Used the pop rivet dimpler to do these holes at the narrow ends of the ribs, where you just can't get the squeezer and dimple dies to fit.
It's very time consuming, and took about 1.5 hours to do all of last dimples. It would have been 1 minute with the Avery tool. Plus the nails in the pop rivet kit are not long enough to get a good purchase with the pop rivet gun for most of the holes, so I ended up using a hammer blow to set most of the dimples. This works, but runs a great risk of dinging the ribs. The last two holes on each rib must use the dimple die method, but that would be 10 minutes. So to save the cost of the vice grip dimpler, I burned more than a hour (and counting), and got some unneccessary blemishes on the ribs. Just get the tool. It comes with the kit.
