222 hours on the hobbs - All Rudder Stiffeners riveted! Yeehaw!

Back riveting continued this evening. I had to figure out how to set the rivets closest to the trailing edge of the rudder. Decided to email Steve Riffe again and ask how he did his. Boy I hope he doesn't get tired of me contacting him! Anyway, of course he replies with all the right answers.

I basically employed (bribed, coaxed, demanded - pick your own verb here!) my youngest sone again to help by gently holding the skin back for enough to clear the set retaining spring of the rivet gun, and I held down the stiffener with my left hand while I set the rivet with the rivet gun in my right hand.

Then the trick I learned from Steve is to start from the back and work toward the front on the opposite side of the skin. This allows you to ensure that the edge of the stiffener closest to the TE will be nice and flush against the skin, allowing the stiffener to flex as necessary toward the front. Then you keep setting rivets from the back toward the front. The results were fantastic.

Here is the left side outer skin with very nicely set flush rivets.

.....And a shot of the completed stiffeners on the inside:

It is amazing to witness the transformation of this very flimsy skin into a very rigid part, simply by adding a few stiffeners to the inside. I would also add that doing the backriveting on the concrete floor of the garage, while very hard on my knees, produced a much better result than I would have experienced if using the back rivet plate on top of the work bench. The big bend is next. The rather large opening of the rudder as shown above is about to close up nice and tight. Normally I would say that the rudder will be done by the end of this weekend, but I will be in a SportAir RV class all weekend.