Drilling the AST Hinges - The First Oops

Before it got really hot outside decided to get an early morning start on the project. The next items to work on were the two hinges that will attach the left and right anti-servo tabs to the stabilator. The hinges were cut to size yesterday and needed to be drilled. Van’s provides a drilling template which is placed between the piano hinge eyelets … the template has holes in it for drilling evenly spaced holes.

                                                The drilling template installed on the hinge ready for drilling.

If one looks at the template above closely you can see there are two rows of holes …only one of which gets drilled … the bottom row. I was going to place tape over the upper holes NOT to be drilled, but first wanted to show the entire template in the photo. Needless to say, after taking the photo I forgot to install the DO NOT DRILL HERE tape and in my early morning grogginess and lack of enough coffee to be fully awake, I began happily drilling away. My happiness soon turned into sorrow when I realized I never taped off the holes that are NOT to be drilled. Oh well, a new hinge is on the way.

                                                         Drilling the anti-servo tab hinges using a template.

                                      You can see the two oops holes if you look at the upper hinge in the photo.

Oops … drilled more holes than I want to admit. After the fact, blue tape was placed over the holes not to be drilled.

                                The three finished hinge pieces – the fourth is in the mail. That is a lot of drilling.

Not to be deterred, work progressed to deburring the edges of all the components that make up the anti-servo tabs with the 1” Scotch-brite wheel.

                                               Deburring an anti-servo tab spar with the 1” Scotch-brite wheel.

After all the parts were deburred all the ribs and the two anti-servo skins were dimpled for accepting flush rivets.

                                                            Dimpling one of the anti-servo tab skins.

                                                                Dimpling the ribs of the anti-servo tabs.