Satisfying Satuday

This has been a productive day in the Angaston ACF, with more vertical stabilizer work.

I began by riveting together the front spar, the lower and upper main ribs and (of course) some nutplates.

 
I am pleased to report that the nutplates went in well (sorry no photo), not to get too optimistic, there are more of these little suckers coming before the day is out. I then riveted the left and right lower spar caps to the rear spar omitting some holes covered by the blue tape. This was the the first mass riveting of blind (pulled or pop) rivets, thankfully by pneumatic puller which I love! All went well.

Next I riveted the upper,  lower, mid ribs and rib tip to the rear spar. It looks like this and is known, surprise surprise, as the skeleton.

On to page 06 now.  This is the forward stabilizer skin. It needs to be trimmed and edges and holes match drilled and deburred. With great excitement I embarked on learning a new skill - dimpling. This involves inserting  dimple dies in the rivet squeezer that when squeezed make a depression in the skin so that the countersink screw (in this case) when inserted, finishes flush with the skin surface. This was superbly completed and this is the finished product. Neat eh!

 The next part to see the light of day is vertical stabilizer main skin. This is a moderately large piece of aluminium.After deburring the edges and holes, joy of joy, you get to install some......................................nutplates! More dimpling was required as part of this process and this went almost without a hitch.  These nutplates will receive the screws to affix the aforementioned neat forward skin. I can very cautiously tell you that these went in without any drama. While  practice and experience does help, I can tell you I am still a long way from loving nutplates but warming to the task. Here is the product.

This is the complete main vertical stabilizer skin (with nutplates installed) ready for the skeleton, previously constructed, to be inserted.

The next step invokes inserting the skeleton (above) into the main skin to form the almost complete vertical stabilizer. This is the skim clecoed to the skeleton. This has a quite trendy hedgehog-like appearance.

The clecoes are now in on both sides ready for riveting.  The stabilizer will then be complete save for the fitting of a fiberglass fairing (cap) at the top.

Then on to the rudder. I retired from the ACF at 6.00 PM well pleased with the days work. I think I am going to enjoy this! A glass or two of fine Barossa red wine served admirably as a celebration.