Practice is over, time for the rudder roll

Here are some dimensions I used to cut the slots and drill the hole for the J bolt. I used a 1/4 inch clearance from the edge of the skin to keep the J bolt and the pipe wrenches clear of the skin. Lots of measuring going on here....

Preparing the plywood table - J bolts and rudder in place

And a slightly better shot

Did I mention a lot of measuring? These slots are so close to each other because I had to cut a different slot for the bottom section of the rudder. The distances between the middle adn top section are not quite the same as the bottom and the middle, so you have to make adjustments of you plan to do one section at a time, which I highly recommend.

Preparing to tape up the bottom section

All taped up and J bolts in place

and the other end....

and this shows the clearance from the edge of the skin...

Next shows the J bolt detail and how much I cut off. Make sure that the J bolt is high enough to clear the skin, and long enough to force the bar to stay in place.

Left side rolled. I actually rolled the top and middle sections at the same time since my pipe was long enough to do that, and then I rolled the bottom separately. Many people report that trying to do all three at once it quite difficult, since it takes a fair amount of force to bend that much aluminum at once. Better safe then sorry, so I chose to do separate sections. As you can see I am way short of the mid point, and I am frustrated at how much more work this appears that it will take to get these holes to line up so they can be riveted so I can finally be done with this assembly. The rudder is a lot of work, but if you just keep working on small portions of the assembly at a time, it will get done.

Next is something I overlooked yet again. More primer (yuck!) Thanks to Steve Riffe and a thread on VAF, I found another rudder pic from him that showed the primer applied to the outside surface of the underlying skin. This is an important thing to do since the outer skin will lay on top of this one, and once riveted will have to endure all sorts of vertical weather phenomenon, such as rain, snow, etc. Failure to prime or protect these critical areas may result in corrosion and the need to build a new rudder (double yuck). So, I ahve masked the outside edge of the underlying skin (the skin I just rolled), and will prime that edge tomorrow. Then I will proceed with the rolling of the other side of the skin, and then try to figure out how to force the edges to get close enough together to allow clecoes to be inserted in the holes, followed by pop rivets.... Hopefully I can call the rudder finished by this weekend, and then it will be on to the right elevator assembly.

Time for bed... To be continued as always....