More Deburring and a Maiden Flight

The last two days I've spent deburring the skins and breaking the edges for a nice lap joint when they get riveted together. On Saturday I took the morning off and helped my friend Tom to get the maiden flight of his newly finished RV-6A documented. That was well worth getting up at 4:30 AM and spending the morning at Ryan Field. It was a wonderful experience to see the plane getting airborne for the first time and I couldn't help myself but to think of my RV-12 doing this on some day in the next years.
Today I broke the edges and so far I have spent about 8 hours on this tedious prep job. The next steps will be more exciting and will probably be worth taking photos again.

Back to Building

Finally, I got back to building today. Feels good! I started deburring the edges and holes of the skins. 5 done, 4 small ones to go. Getting the blue vinyl off was pretty easy this time. No photos as there's really not a lot to see. Spent about 3 hours today and probably another 3 hours to tomorrow to get the skins ready for prepping and priming.

Storing the Stabilator

Storing the larger parts like the Stabilator is becoming an issue. Although I found a good solution for the Stabilator by placing it on some swings that are hanging from the covered patio, which proved to be reliable even in gusty weather, I was getting worried that the ever creative Southern Arizona insects or even birds could find the seemingly safe housing the inside of this structure would provide too inviting to resist moving in. So, in order to prevent these undocumented aliens to invade my Stabilator I decided to seal off the possible entry points.
I used a newspaper for the center section to allow a little bit of moisture transfer and I also added 5 packs of silica gel packs inside each side of the Stabilator to avoid condensation.
I hope this turns out to be a comprehensive solution to long term storage until I finish the fuselage and eventually need to mount this part on the rest of the airplane...

preparing tailcone work

Just a quick update so you know I am still working on it... I was taking some time off to enjoy flying the S-12S before Monsoon season kicks in completely and to "waste" some time I wouldn't have to spend waiting for the wing kit otherwise.
But I did at least a little bit of work. That's sorting out the skins, thinking about how to build a temporary work table to do the surface prepping and priming as my little painter's corner next to the garage wouldn't do for the large skins without nicking them in some way or another.
Now it's way into July and I guess this weekend I will start coming back to my routine of working on the plane again. Deburring, breaking the edges and prepping and priming the skins are the most likely candidates on the ToDo list this weekend.

Mission Accomplished

I've accomplished the task of finishing the Stabilator over the weekend. Yay! 4th of July can begin now...
The final riveting of the splice plate and the aft skins went easy and without any incident. You might see that I broke the edge of the skins where they were supposed to get riveted. I was afraid that the force of the rivet would pull the skin up a bit, creating a sharp edge and a nasty look. The tool I have for that from Avery is not that easy to use. You have to take extra care to guide it cleanly along the edge as it tends to run into the skin which creates pretty ugly bends that are hard to fix. This will cause a few problems when I use this one on the tail cone skins, I can already see that.
The other quirk with it is that it is very hard to fine adjust as a little turn on the screw has a very large effect. Oh well, I'll just have to live with it I guess. But if you read this and haven't bought one yet, you might want to try the one from Cleveland Tools as it can't be worse than this one here.
The last steps were the assembly of the control horn and mounting the weights on the Counterbalance Arm. That went well, too although I nicked the powder coating in my vise a bit and so I gave it a little rattle can primer on these spots to keep the steel from rusting.
That was it! Final assembly is supposed to happen later and now I'm heading towards the tail cone.
55 hours went into the Stabilator. This sums up to 116.5 total so far.

Hinges Riveted and Some Prep Work Done

I thought there wasn't much to do until the Stabilator was done but I underestimated the time factor for the few steps ahead of me. It was amazing how much time it took to get them done. And so was the amount of rivets going into the rear flanges. It looks more like the skins are attaching the rivets than vice versa, if you know what I mean.
Anyway, the job was practically easy although lengthy, as I said before. Because of my resolution to prime the inside and all mating parts, I couldn't just rivet away and the blue tape on the pictures indicate some clecos that were not be removed as the splice plate had yet to be primed. So had the aft skins that also had to be partly match drilled with the ribs that were supposed to hold them.
When I clecoed these aft skins to the ribs to do the drilling I noticed that I had overlooked that the skins will be attached to the main skins of the Stabilator and thus will have a mating surfaces that I hadn't primed yet. Oh well, I was at prepping anyway and so I took care of that and sprayed a basically assembled part for the first time (can you see that I am still thinking about painting the plane before final assembly here?).
Priming concluded the day in the shop so it could dry and settle over the night.

Skins Are On

I've finished riveting the skins on. Everything worked fine but I've noticed about three places where the clecos have bent the skin when the weight of the Stabilator was pushing sideways on them. It doesn't look too bad and maybe I can fill this later when I'm preparing the surfaces for painting. I will have to be a bit more careful next time to avoid this in the future.
The good news is, that I also got my A/C unit installed and it works great! It cooled down the workshop from 102 to 82 within two hours and if you stand in the blast of the cool air while it is doing this, you can work along just fine. I am very happy I spent the money on this unit.
This weekend I won't be having a lot of shop time but I do hope to finish the Stabilator at least as there is not really a lot left to do. And then it will be on for the tail cone ...