Continuing on with elevator parts prep, I deburred the edges of the 4 elevator skins, the two fronts spars, and doubler plates. With the completed horizontal stabilizer stored safely away on a shelf, I had lots of room to spread parts around on my workbenches making deburring significantly easier.
I then deburred the matching holes in the doubler plates and spars as they were already final drilled.
After a few hours of deburring, it was time to start doing something different. The next steps had me bending the tabs on the elevator skins. I had to ensure that the tabs were bent in the correct directions because that then designated the skins as left and right, but I had previously already marked the skins so figuring out the orientation of the tabs was easy.
I used two blocks of wood in which to sandwich the skin, with the top edge of the bottom wood block radiused to 1/16" so that the skin bend would not be too sharp (and risk cracking later). After marking the bend line, I carefully clamped the skin in place, paying attention to supporting the skin that was overhanding the workbench.
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| Skin clamped securely to work bench with tab (to be bent) overhanging |
I started forming the bend with another block of wood and was able to bend the tab to about 70 degrees that way. I then used a (taped over) flat set in my rivet gun along the bend to bend the tab further. This worked well, except that I could not get the rivet set on the tab close to where the skin extends out because the spring holding the rivet set would interfere with the skin. This was not an issue though because I was able to finish the bend to 90 degrees using my hand seamer after removing the skin from the clamps and wood blocks.
The tabs on the other 3 skins were bent the same way, and all turned out great, right in line with the trailing edge.
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| 4 skin tabs bent to 90 degrees |
Next I upsized the holes for the trim tab cables to 5/8" s directed. This was accomplished in the drill press for greater stability, and I also upsized the holes in stages; #21 followed by #10 followed by the unibit to 5/8".
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| Using the unibit in a drill press to upsize holes for cables |
After drilling, I deburred both holes and they came out nicely.
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| 5/8" cable holes in the left and right elevator front spars |
Now it was time to start assembling the elevators. Assembly started with clecoing the fronts spars, ribs, rear spars and a couple of shear clips in place. I worked on both elevators in parallel.
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| Elevator assembly begins with the front spar attached to the bottom skins |
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| Right elevator with spars and ribs installed |
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| Left elevator with spars and ribs installed (skin side) |
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| Shear clip installed next to the close out tab |
Finally, I final drilled the #40 holes from the spars to in the inboard most rib on each elevator as these were somewhat tight. All other holes from spars to ribs lined up nicely and did not require final drilling.
Build Hints
- 1/16" radius on the wood block worked well for bending the skin tabs and giving a nice rounded edge.
- For holes that need to be upsized with a unibit, first upsize with a drill bit(s) to near 1/4" if needed as this will make drilling easier.
Time Taken: 8.0 hours
Dates: October 29 - November 2 2022
Elevators Total Time: 14.6 hours
RV-10 Build Total Time: 178.3 hours
Priming Total Time: 15.8 hours (not included in build time totals)
