Rudder Preparation Complete

It was a very productive day at DOG Aviation doing the final prep on the rudder’s components. The morning was spent finishing the dimpling of all the rudder rib to skin holes followed by squaring all the flanges to the web then deburring all the edges of the ribs with a 1” Scotch-brite wheel. I suppose to save time, one would really only need to deburr just those edges that touch the outer skin and spar since hands do not need to go inside the assembly to rivet as is necessary with other RV models ... but that is not how we roll at DOG Aviation. It really doesn’t take that much extra time to do the extra work.

         Clamped the air grinder to the work bench and deburred all rudder rib edges with a 1” Scotch-brite wheel.

Next the rudder spar was dimpled then introduced to the 1” Scotch-brite wheel for deburring … there were some nasty sharp edges along with a few slightly ragged shear marks to smooth out.

                                      Pneumatic squeezer was clamped to the bench with dimple dies installed this makes
                                      dimpling all the holes in the rudder spar much easier ... the glove keeps the thumb from
                                      getting sore from pushing the actuator lever.

                                             Prepped internal rudder parts ready for Sanchem and then primer.

The dimpling of the outer skin proved to be a little challenging but that was expected. Did not run into any unforeseen difficulties and was able to complete the removal of the blue protective film with the help of the soldering iron at the rivet lines ... then carefully dimpled most all the holes except a few with the C-frame. The special 120 degree die set I had special made for use with the hand rivet tool will be used to dimple the holes the C-frame could not reach without causing damage to the skin.

                                        A soldering iron is used to melt the protective film on the rudder skin along
                                        the rivet lines for easy removal for dimpling and riveting.

                                                   Using the C-frame to dimple rivet holes in the rudder skin.
As you can see from the above photos, there are not many parts to the rudder and the ribs are rather small. Because setup and cleanup for the spray gun is a chore, I’m planning on skipping ahead in the plans and preparing a few more parts so there will be more parts to make priming with the spray gun worth the effort.