Assembling the Elevators

After finishing up the horizontal stabilizer I got back to assembling the elevators. I had already prepped and deburred most of the elevator parts so I made good progress this afternoon on assembly and final drilling.

I started with bending the tabs on the elevator skins. I followed the recommended approach in the plans and clamped the skins with the tabs aligned at the edge of the workbench. Thankfully I double checked my previous markings and noticed that I had mistakenly aligned them to the outboard side of the relief cutouts instead of the inboard side. After fixing up the markings I proceeded with the bending.

The bending went well and I didn’t need to use the rivet gun (I used a hammer and block of wood instead).

After completing the bends I began clecoing and final sizing the holes with a reamer.

Next up is attaching and final drilling the tip rib assemblies. The ordering of the tip rib layers with the skin and spars isn’t very clear in the plans so I’ll read ahead a bit further and get back to building tomorrow.