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Exciting day today as I started a new sub-assembly: the rudder! The rudder is different from the stabilizers in that there aren't really any ribs except for at the ends. To strengthen it up there are stiffeners instead about every six inches. They are shipped in on long lengths of aluminum angle that have about four stiffeners each. I started by following the cut lines on the angle to get the stiffeners all cut out. Here's a picture showing the angle both pre-cut and post-cut.  Here they are all cut out. Don't let the nice pose fool you, the stiffeners were stacked two deep so there is double the stiffeners that you see here.  After cutting the stiffeners, the edges are really rough from both the snips and also the notches which let you know where to cut. To get the edges all knocked down and corners smoothed took about three hours, serious dedication and a hand file. Long and monotonous. Thank goodness for building in my living room and a Man-vs-Wild marathon on the Discovery Channel! After I got them all smoothed out, I clecoed them to the rudder skin and match drilled all the holes. Post-drilling I followed procedure and deburred all the holes, devinyled the rivet lines and dimpled everything. Pretty standard, really. This concluded what was a long and boring yet productive day on the project.
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| Thanks for visiting! | Last Update: 25 May 2012 |