Stabilator Skins Prepared

After inventorying the wing kit, decided it was a good time to repair the damage the broken assembly bay #1 door spring caused when it turned into shrapnel. Had been putting this off because there were ribs lying around on the benches and gravity is not an ally when working overhead with tools. A day and a half later, three trips to the hardware store and more saw dust created, all the springs have been replaced on receiving bay #1 and assembly bay #1 so work on the RV-12 has resumed.

The stabilator’s aft skins are outboard from the anti-servo tabs and come as two skins held together by tabs that need to be cut to separate the two skins. Unfortunately, DOG Aviation’s puny band saw was not large enough to make the cut, so the tabs were cut with metal snips.

                              Stabilator aft skins need the metal tabs cut to separate the two skins from each other.

                      Connecting tabs being cut by hand using metal snips to separate the two stabilator aft skins.

                                   Filing the edges of the stabilator’s aft skins smooth for the Scotch-brite wheel.

The stabilator’s left and right main skins are identical and come separated … however, there were lots of sharp edges and remnants of fabrication tabs so both skins received a quick filing to smooth out the small lumps on the edges followed by a good deburring with the Scotch-brite wheel.

                                 Smoothing all the edges of one of the stabilator skins with a Scotch-brite wheel.