Section 7 - Rudder (trimming; initial assembly; drilling trailing wedge)

The rudder is making the vertical stabilizer seem like child's play.  Lots of little parts that all need to be separated and trimmed down to their final shapes.  Skins are VERY thin (0.016") and feel like they will bend/break when I move them around.  Tons of rivets in the skin as well as lots of LP4-3 (and other) blind rivets to zip the entire assembly together.  Amazing engineering though; I like the lead weight used as a counter balance.  For those of you, whom have flown an RV, that smooth feel of the control surfaces is due in large part to well-matched counterweights.

A few pictures from this part of the build are below.

I hear the trailing edge is a real issue; here it is all clecoed, ready for final drilling.  I used a #40 straight fluted reamer instead of a #40 drill bit, since all I wanted to do was enlarge the holes.  Sometimes the #40 bit is too aggressive, and the trailing edge wedge is del-i-cate!

Yup, FAA ... it's me doing the work:

Such a shame to have to uncleco everything ... next steps were to deburr all the friggin' holes in the skins (not shown) AND these parts, and then dimpled the skins.  That's a lot of dimples!