rv-14 blog

Blue film, and drilling out rivets

2026-10-11T00:00:00+00:00

Hello again! It's been a few weeks, and the elevator is coming along. Nothing big enough to need a post of its own this time, but two small things kept coming up while I was working, so here they are together: what to do with the blue plastic film on the skins, and how to get a bad rivet back out.

The blue film</h2>
Every aluminum skin in the kit arrives wearing a layer of blue plastic film. It's there to keep the sheet from getting scratched on its way from the mill to your garage, and it does a good job. It's also printed with the stock markings (the alloy specification, the thickness, and the lot number), which is handy if you ever need to trace a piece of material back to where it came from. The temptation is to rip all of it off on day one, but a bare alclad sheet scratches easily, and a deep scratch in a skin is a stress riser you can't un-make. So the rule I've settled on is to take the film off only where the work demands it, and leave it everywhere else for as long as possible. [full size]</a> An elevator skin with the film stripped from the seams only. The big panels stay protected until the very end.
What demands removal is anywhere metal has to meet metal or metal has to meet rivets. Along every rivet line and on every faying surface, the film has to go: it would be crushed and trapped under the rivet, it prevents primer from bonding where it's needed, and it makes it impossible to see what the dimples are doing. The way I do it is to cut the film along the edge of each strip I want clear, then peel it up in one piece. Once it's off, the seam is bare metal and the large panel in between is still protected. You can see the result in the photo above: a grid of polished seams, with blue islands in between. It looks a little odd, but nothing in the middle of those panels has ever been touched by a tool. [full size]</a>

Drilling out a bad rivet</h2>
Sooner or later a rivet comes out wrong. It might be crooked, the shop head might be too short, or the manufactured head might be cracked, and Van's has published quality standards for exactly what counts as acceptable. Anything outside those standards has to come out. This is well-known territory among builders (people drill out hundreds of rivets over the course of a build), but it's still easy to do badly, and a drill that walks off center will elongate the hole in the skin and turn a one-minute fix into a repair. [full size]</a> Replacements come out of the drawers: this one is AN470AD4-8, the universal-head rivet that makes up most of the plane's bulkheads.
The process has three steps. First, drill out the head, using a bit the same size as the rivet shank and going down only to the base of the head. Don't go any deeper, since you don't want to start enlarging the hole in the skin. Second, drill into the body of the rivet with a much finer bit, which hollows out the shank and leaves a thin wall of rivet that no longer holds anything tight. Third, snap the head off with a punch, and pull what's left of the shank out of the hole. If everything has gone well, the hole is exactly as big as it was before the rivet went in, and a new rivet of the same size goes right back into it. [full size]</a>
The proof is in the shank itself. These are the leftovers from a few I've removed lately, held in the cutters. They're -4-9 rivets, which are long, thin, and the least forgiving size to drill, since a long shank gives a bit plenty of room to drift sideways. In each one, the hole through the middle is almost perfectly centered, and the wall of the shank is an even thickness all the way around. That's what you're looking for: if the bore is off to one side, the bit was off to one side, and the hole in the skin has probably paid for it. [full size]</a>
Both of these come down to the same idea: slow down at the point where a mistake costs the most. With the film, the point is deciding where to cut it, and with the rivets it's the first few turns of the drill. In both cases a few seconds of care keeps a small problem small. Next up is more of the elevator, and I'll make sure to document anything that goes wrong in a way I can learn from.

SB-00043: sealing a spar you can't reach into

2026-08-31T00:00:00+00:00

Quick catch-up for anyone who missed the last one: a few weeks back the elevator trim tab became the first part of this build to need FlameMaster CS3204, the two-part aerospace goop that everyone on the forums just calls "tank sealant." That was the friendly version of the job. The parts were open on the bench, I mixed a batch on a stick, striped it onto the flat mating faces, and cleco'd the skins down while it was still wet. You could watch every bit of it go where it was supposed to.

The elevator rear spar is the same material and the exact opposite job, and it's the reason I spent two evenings this week hunched over a syringe.

Why the spar gets sealed at all</h2>
The rear spar is the structural beam that runs the length of the elevator, and the elevator is the moving flap at the very back of the tail that points the nose up and down. For years Van's built that spar dry, just riveted aluminum. Then cracks started showing up in the field, spreading out from the rivet holes along the spar. Aluminum that flexes back and forth long enough eventually gives up, and a rivet hole is a stress riser that hands the crack a place to start.
The fix is Service Bulletin SB-00043, which Van's put out in September 2023. It adds a bead of tank sealant down the inside of the spar-to-skin joint. It isn't sealing against fuel or water; nothing wet ever gets near here. Van's word for what it's doing is vibration damping. A flexible rubbery layer bonded across the joint soaks up a little of the buzz every time the surface works, and takes the edge off the fatigue cycles the rivets would otherwise absorb on their own. My kit shipped after the bulletin, so the sealing steps were already baked into my instructions as rev. 1. Nothing to retrofit, nothing to drill out. I just had to do it.

Why you can't just butter it on</h2> [full size]</a>
Here's the problem in one picture. The spar is a C-section, and the open mouth of the C faces aft, toward the trailing edge. The joint I need to butter is the back wall of that C and the skins that wrap onto its flanges, and it sits about eight inches deep in a slot that starts at three and a half inches of clearance at the mouth and closes down to maybe an inch and a half at the bottom. There is no combination of a mixing stick and a gloved hand that reaches down there. Whatever puts the sealant on has to be long, thin, and stiff, and it has to do it from the mouth.
The rig</h2> [full size]</a>
That's the whole applicator: a generic 60 cc Luer-lock syringe with an 8-gauge blunt dispensing tip threaded onto the nose. "8-gauge" is about the fattest needle anyone makes, roughly 4.3 mm of bore, and "blunt" means it's cut off square instead of pointed, because the goal is to lay a bead, not vaccinate the spar. The tip is five inches long, which is enough, stacked on top of the syringe body, to touch the bottom of the slot.
None of it is precious. The syringes come off Amazon at $1.52 apiece and I treat them as single-use. The stainless tip costs about twice what the syringe does, which is the whole reason it's worth cleaning instead of tossing. Add a few spare tips and the entire "applicator" came to under thirty dollars, most of which is still sitting in a drawer. [full size]</a>
Driving the syringe is a $22 two-speed caulk gun from Menards that I already owned for squirting RTV silicone around the house. The two "speeds" are really two thrust ratios, a low gear for shoving thick stuff and a high gear for going fast once it's moving. It's a completely unremarkable tool and it's the correct one, because fresh tank sealant doesn't so much flow as grudgingly relocate. Pushing it through that 8-gauge bore by hand feels like extruding bread dough, and my honest rate was around 0.6 cc per second. Worth noting where that resistance actually lives: it's the plunger fighting friction in the barrel, not the needle choking the flow. The Luer fitting itself is one of the stouter parts of the whole stack.
The one part I had to print</h2> [full size]</a>
Two problems turned up the first evening. One: a skinny 60 cc syringe doesn't sit straight in a cradle built for a fat caulk tube, so it cants over sideways under load. Two, and worse: a five-inch tip is a five-inch lever. A small sideways nudge at the far end of it turns into a real twisting load right at the Luer thread, and I didn't love how that felt down in the slot.
My first answer to problem one was a washer, shimming the syringe up straight in the cradle. It worked, and it did nothing at all for problem two. So I opened FreeCAD and drew a sleeve from scratch: a plain tube that slides over the top of an assembled syringe, snug on the barrel and up over the collar where the tip screws on. It doesn't clip, latch, or thread onto anything. It just wraps the weak spot in a stiff collar so the bending load has somewhere to go besides the threads, and it seats the syringe dead straight in the gun while it's at it, so the washer got to retire. [full size]</a>
It's printed in plain PLA. Not PLA+, not anything clever, just the cheapest spool on the shelf, and it has shrugged off every solvent that's landed on it so far. Ten minutes to draw, slice, and send to the printer, printed once, no revisions, which almost never happens to me. It costs a few cents of plastic, and because it only ever touches the clean outside of the syringe it doesn't even get dirty; I peel it off and keep it. The file is going up on Thingiverse for anyone else staring down this bulletin.
Working the clock</h2> [full size]</a>
CS3204 is a two-part system, and this is the setup for weighing it out: a cream-colored base and a dark curing agent, combined at roughly ten parts base to one part agent by weight. You can measure both parts into a cup and let them sit next to each other all evening and nothing happens. The thirty-minute working clock only starts when you start stirring, and from that moment you've got half an hour to get every bit of it onto the part before it stiffens and quits sticking.
That one fact drives all the rest. Mix a small batch, about 25 cc, because that's roughly as much as I can actually place before whatever's left in the cup sets into a brick. Stir it until it's one flat, even color with no marbled streaks running through it; you can't over-mix the stuff, but you're spending clock the entire time you try. Then load the syringe, push the sleeve on, drop it in the gun, and go. The elevator took about 120 cc across five or so batches. [full size]</a>
If you flip between my photos you'll notice one batch came out nearly black and a later one is a much lighter grey. That worried me the first time it happened, so to save you the same worry: it's only mix ratio. Anywhere from about nine-to-one to eleven-to-one is fine, and the curing agent carries almost all the pigment, so a little extra agent tints the whole batch dramatically darker. It doesn't change the cure and it doesn't change the strength. Darker is just darker.
The bead, and where I went my own way</h2>
The bulletin asks for a 3/8-inch bead, a 9.5 mm rope of sealant run down the joint. I didn't do that. I ran a distinctly thinner bead and moved the tip more slowly, which lets the sealant settle down into the corner and wet both faces properly instead of arching over the gap as one fat sausage that's only half in contact. By the time I'd covered the same run of joint I had the same footprint of sealant down, better filled, using less material. I'm satisfied a well-wetted thin fillet does the damping job at least as well as an underfed fat one, but it's a step away from the letter of the bulletin, so I'm putting it in writing here.
Aiming, at least, is not the hard part. The joint is eight inches down but it's a straight shot from the mouth, so it's just eyeballed under the shop lights, no fancy lighting. The sealant is tacky enough and thick enough that it stays exactly where the tip leaves it. You could genuinely do this upside down.
The one thing that isn't negotiable: every rivet in that spar goes in before any sealant gets mixed. The sealant is the last step, a fillet laid into a structure that's already finished and already riveted solid. Sealant anywhere near a cleco is a small tragedy. Once a section's done I give it about 12 hours before I touch it again.
Can you check it?</h2>
Mostly, no. Once the bead is down in the corner of a closed C-section eight inches deep, there's no clean way to confirm it's continuous. You can put a light on one side and hunt for it glowing through on the other, but that's a weak test and I wouldn't lean on it. This is where it helps to remember what the sealant is and isn't. It's a damper on a joint that is already fully fastened and structurally complete without it. It is not primary structure. A slightly imperfect bead still damps.
Cleanup, and the one thing I'd change</h2> [full size]</a>
This is still the messiest material I've ever worked with, and the disposal plan is just economics. The $1.52 syringe goes straight in the trash. The pricier stainless tip is worth the three minutes it takes to flush with solvent. The printed sleeve never gets dirty, so it goes back in the drawer. Everything else, the cups, sticks, gloves, and a truly stupid quantity of paper towels, is now garbage. A friend of mine sums FlameMaster up well: everything it touches either becomes trash or becomes an airplane.
The rig itself I wouldn't change a thing about. Next time I've got a sealant job crammed into a space I can't get a hand into, this is exactly what I'll reach for. The only thing I'd do differently is the prep: more paper down, tools staged tighter, work area kept genuinely clean, because scraping cured sealant off things I never meant to seal is going to cost me more time later than a drop cloth would have cost me now.
Next up is finishing the rest of the elevator and hanging it on the stabilizer, which finally closes the book on the tail.

Tank sealant: what it is, and why my trim tab needed it

2026-08-06T00:00:00+00:00

Quick catch-up for anyone who missed the CherryMAX saga: the tail is still the frontier, and I'm back on the elevator trim tab (the small hinged strip on the trailing edge of the elevator that lets you dial stick pressure out in cruise, instead of holding forward or back pressure on the yoke for the whole flight). Between that post and this one there wasn't much worth writing up on its own: a full round of cutting, grinding, deburring, mock assembly, mock disassembly, scuffing, and priming, which is the unglamorous middle stretch every part in this kit goes through. But the trim tab just became the first part in the entire build to need something new: a two-part aerospace goop that everyone on the builder forums just calls "tank sealant." [full size]</a>
Here's the staging area from the night I mixed it. Primed trim tab skins on the left, cleco pliers and foam inserts in the middle, a jug of desiccant and a spare quart of primer off to the side, and a little zippered tool bag full of mixing sticks and permanent markers. Everything laid out ahead of time, on purpose, because once this stuff is mixed you do not get to go wandering off to find a tool.
What's actually in the can</h2>
The kit is Flamemaster CS3204, Class B-1/2, conforming to spec AMS-S-8802 Rev F Type 2. It ships as a two-part quart kit: Part A is the base compound, Part B is the curing agent, and you mix them 100 parts to 10 parts by weight right before use. This was my first time touching the stuff. I'd heard the rumors on the forums about how nasty it is to work with, so I ordered the largest quantity Aircraft Spruce sells it in: one quart kit, $168. [full size]</a>
That's Part A's label: packaging date, nine-month shelf life, "store below 80°F," refrigeration recommended to stretch that further, flash point, VOC content, and a full Prop 65 warning about cancer and reproductive harm. Every can is basically a dated, lot-numbered lab batch rather than a shelf product. [full size]</a>
And Part B, the curing agent, with the line that matters most printed in red: "BLEND THOROUGHLY BEFORE ADDING TO PART A." Get that wrong and you don't get a bad seal, you get a seal that never actually finishes curing.
Why "tank" sealant, and not silicone or JB Weld</h2> [full size]</a>
That's the actual instruction page, Figure 1 in the manual, page 09-14. Step 2 says to prep the mating surfaces of the trim tab skins and ribs with isopropyl alcohol on the previously scuffed areas. Step 3 says to apply tank sealant in a coat no more than 1/32 inch thick, then cleco and bond the parts together before riveting. It's not sealing anything against fuel here; the trim tab never sees avgas. What it's actually doing is called a faying surface seal: filling the microscopic gap between two riveted aluminum layers so moisture can never wick in between them and start crevice corrosion, and so the two skins can't work against each other under vibration over the next few decades. The rivets provide the clamping force. The sealant is what keeps the joint from quietly rotting from the inside where you'd never see it.
This is technically an experimental deviation if you skip it - you could bed this joint in an RTV silicone instead, and some builders have. But RTV isn't approved for structural aircraft use no matter how many decades of good service it's put in holding your windowsills shut, and under sustained vibration a silicone bead in a load path like this is expected to fail within a few hundred flight hours. CS3204 is qualified for a service life in the 10,000+ hour range. The other obvious substitute, JB Weld, fails for a different reason: it's a rigid epoxy putty, great for gluing things that never move relative to each other, but an airframe flexes constantly, and a hard epoxy bond will eventually crack and pop the seam open instead of absorbing that movement. Tank sealant is neither of those things. It stays a rubber.
Mixing it</h2>
Mixing went smoothly, but only because I was careful. This particular B-1/2 formulation gives you about thirty minutes once Part A and Part B are combined before it stops being workable. So you're working a genuinely messy compound against a clock, which is exactly the kind of pressure that turns small mistakes into bigger ones. Gloves are not optional. Any surface this stuff touches is coated forever. You can squeegee some of it off with a stick, but there's always a film left behind.
Freshly mixed, it handles like warm marshmallow fluff. It grabs onto anything it touches, and if you ask it nicely with a stick, it'll spread out into an impossibly thin, even layer and just sit there, held by its own surface tension. No matter how thin you spread it, it keeps this strange, almost mechanically-perfect shine, more like polished metal than rubber. And it smells, unmistakably, like old hard-boiled eggs mixed with new tires. Turns out that's a pretty accurate preview of the chemistry. More on that below.
Striping the spars</h2> [full size]</a>
The manual doesn't call for a full coat across the whole spar, just a stripe at each rib location, sized to roughly match the rib flange about to land on top of it. Here's both trim tab spars laid out with their stripes done, primer visible everywhere else. [full size]</a>
A closer look at one stripe. This is the texture I mean: glossy, almost lacquered, with fine trailing strings left over from pulling the stick away. [full size]</a>
Same thing, different rib, same mirror shine. It photographs like there's metal shaving embedded in it. There isn't. That's genuinely just how reflective the surface holds itself, right up until you touch it and it doesn't let go of your glove.
Riveting wet, then weighting it down</h2>
With the sealant still wet, the skins get cleco'd on and riveted immediately. It's doing double duty as gap-filler and light adhesive, not just a coating that gets covered up. A little squeeze-out at the rivet lines is expected and normal. [full size]</a>
Then, straight from the book: place a weighted board over the assembly and leave it flat while the sealant cures, to guarantee full contact between the two skins the whole time. Those particular blocks of wood are actually my car ramps' cribbing, the same chunks I stack under the jack for oil changes, moonlighting as aircraft clamps for a couple of days. [full size]</a>
A closer look at one end, with the trim tab horn bracket cleco'd down under the corner of the block. I mixed and applied the sealant the night of August 3rd and left the blocks in place from the 4th through the 6th. Two full days, exactly what the manual calls for.
How it actually works, and why it's $168 a quart</h2>
Part A is a liquid polysulfide polymer: a chain of carbon links strung together with sulfur-sulfur bonds and reactive thiol (sulfur-hydrogen) end groups, loaded with fillers and the carbon black pigment that makes it jet black. Part B is the curing agent, classically a manganese-dioxide-based oxidizer. Its whole job is to grab those thiol ends and stitch the polymer chains together into one continuous, cross-linked rubber network. That's what "curing" actually means here. It isn't solvent evaporating out like paint, it's a real chemical reaction, and it only starts once A and B are touching in the right ratio. Which is exactly why the can insists on blending Part B thoroughly before it ever meets Part A, and exactly why you're racing a thirty-minute clock once it does. Too little curing agent and the reaction never finishes, leaving a soft, permanently tacky mess. Too much, and you push it the other way into something brittle. That rotten-egg smell isn't a coincidence either. Sulfur compounds smell like sulfur compounds, mixed with whatever the plasticizers in the filler package smell like. Hence old hard-boiled eggs and new tires.
The sulfur-rich backbone is also the whole reason this family of rubber is what lines fuel tanks in the first place. Most rubbers and adhesives will swell, soften, or dissolve if they sit in contact with hydrocarbon fuel for years. A polysulfide network holds up far better, staying intact and flexible for the life of the tank instead of degrading and eventually leaking. That flexibility matters again here, even on a joint that never sees a drop of fuel, because an airframe never actually holds still. Rivets work. Skins flex. Temperatures swing. A rubber can absorb all of that indefinitely. A rigid material like JB Weld's epoxy would eventually crack instead.
None of that comes cheap. AMS-S-8802 is an aerospace qualification spec, which means every batch carries traceable lot numbers (the ones printed right on the cans above), plus documented testing and paperwork most hardware-store sealants never touch. The nine-month, refrigeration-recommended shelf life bakes waste directly into the supply chain. It ships as a regulated combustible, hazmat liquid. And the buyer pool is tiny: aircraft manufacturers, MRO shops, and kit builders, none of the volume economics of a tube of bathroom silicone. You're not buying $168 worth of black tar. You're buying a rubber that's certified to sit inside a fuel tank, or laminated permanently between two riveted skins, for the life of the airplane, without ever failing.
And here's the payoff: the trim tab, fully riveted, off the bench and cured. Every bit of that sealant is sealed inside the joint now, where you'll never see it again. Honestly, after all the horror stories, it wasn't nearly as bad as I'd built it up to be in my head. If your kit calls for it, go ahead and try it yourself.
Next up is the rest of the elevator. Which, naturally, means more sealant is coming.

[Design Deviation] Hstab Cherry MAX rivets

2026-07-18T00:00:00+00:00

It's been a while, but I think you'll enjoy this one. It's a bit of a detective story, and if you've never touched an airplane kit before, stick around, I'll explain the bits as they come up.
Quick catch-up for anyone new here: I'm building a small two-seat airplane, an RV-14, from a kit, in my garage, one rivet at a time. It shows up as a giant stack of pre-cut aluminum pieces and a book of instructions, and my job is to fit and fasten it all together in the right order, which turns out to be the hard part. The tail is where I'm at, and the tail is where I goofed.
So here's the embarrassing part up front: I skipped a step. On the horizontal stabilizer (that's the fixed, wing-shaped surface sticking out either side of the tail, the one the moving flap hinges off of) I never actually riveted the elevator hinge brackets. And of course I didn't notice at the time. I only caught it much later, while I was test fitting the elevator and realized there was just no good way to bolt the two things together. Cue the sinking feeling in my stomach.
If you don't build, a rivet is just a little metal fastener you shove through a hole in two sheets of aluminum, and then you smash the back flat so it can't pull back out. The normal way to do it is with a solid 'driven' rivet: you hold a rivet gun on the front, and you press a heavy chunk of steel called a bucking bar against the back, and the gun hammers the tail into a nice little mushroom. Strong, cheap, been done a million times. The whole trick, though, is that you need to reach both sides of the joint, because that bucking bar has to go somewhere. Remember that, because it's the entire reason I'm in this mess.
And this isn't some throwaway rivet either. The elevator is the flappy bit at the very back of the tail that points the nose up and down, and it swings on these hinge brackets attached to the rear spar (the spar being the big structural beam that runs the length of the surface). Every ounce of load the elevator makes, all of your pitch control, gets funneled through that one joint. It's the lynchpin of the whole tail. Those rivets are not optional and they are not staying empty.
The problem is timing. The proper way to rivet these calls for a bucking bar in a spot that is now sealed up behind a bunch of structure I've already riveted shut. I can't get back there. So after swallowing my pride, I had to figure something out, because those brackets cannot stay unriveted.
The classic fix is genuinely miserable. You drill out 200-plus of the rivets you already put in, peel the structure back open, jam the bucking bar in, buck the hinge rivets, and then close the whole thing up again. Sounds fine on paper. In reality, drilling a rivet out almost never leaves a clean hole. The drill wanders a hair and the hole comes out a touch too big. Do that 200 times and realistically half of them end up oversized, which means reaching for special 'oops' rivets that are one size up to fill the sloppy holes. If I'm really careful maybe I get that down to 15%. Either way I'd be left with a bunch of enlarged holes in what's called primary structure, meaning the load-bearing bones of the airplane, the parts that absolutely cannot fail. Filling those bones with sloppy oversized holes is a great way to quietly weaken the exact thing I'm trying to save.
I wanted something smarter. This is where the blind rivet comes in. A blind rivet goes in from one side only, no bucking bar. It's got a little stem down the middle, and when you yank the stem with the right tool, the back end balloons out and clamps everything tight. If I could use blind rivets here, I wouldn't have to reopen anything, no drilling out 200 rivets, no wandering holes, no oversized mess. The one I had my eye on is an aerospace-grade blind rivet called the CherryMAX. So the whole question boils down to something simple to ask and annoyingly hard to answer: is a CherryMAX strong enough to stand in for the driven rivet the plans want, right here, in this high-load spot?
So first I turned to Van's builder support (Van's designed and sells the kit). They were absolutely unwilling to touch it, basically saying it was on me, the builder, to evaluate the decision. Thanks.
Then I went to the experts on the VAF forum, which is the big community hub for these planes. The advice there was to just read the shear ratings off the CherryMAX product page and be done with it. 'Shear' being the load that tries to slice the rivet sideways like a pair of scissors, which is the number most people grab first. And look, I knew better than to stop there. It's not that the ratings are wrong, I trust them completely. It's that a driven rivet and a CherryMAX are different alloys with different tensile strengths (tensile being how hard you can pull on something before it lets go), so the actual limit of the joint is different, not just the number stamped on one rivet's page. Grabbing one rivet's rating and multiplying by however many rivets there are doesn't really tell you what the assembled joint will hold. I needed to actually quantify the difference between the two, not squint at it and hope.
So I did what any reasonable person with too much CAD software would do and ran some FEA in Autodesk Inventor. FEA (finite element analysis) is basically a simulation of how a part bends and where it gets overstressed when you load it up. You hand it the 3D geometry and the forces, and it paints you a heatmap of where the metal is fine and where it's about to file a complaint. And I didn't model some lonely rivet by itself, I built the whole thing, bracket, spar, and skin all together as one system, with simulated rivets carrying load the way they actually would on the airplane. That's the part 'just read the product page' quietly skips over, because in real life the load shares itself across the joint in ways a single number can't see.
From the current worst-case load, the original driven rivets came out to roughly 150 kg of capacity per bracket pair. Swap in the CherryMAX properties and that same joint handled about 120 kg. Is 120 kg good? Honestly, I still don't know what the required number even is. I asked Van's straight up and got told the numbers are 'readily available online.' They are not. I looked. But at least now I had a real, apples-to-apples comparison instead of a hopeful guess.
Somewhere in here a few folks floated a different fastener called an M-lok, which would've been great, except it doesn't come small enough. Rivets are sized by their diameter in thirty-seconds of an inch, so a '-4' is 4/32 (an eighth of an inch) across and a '-5' is a hair fatter. This joint is drilled for -4 holes, and the smallest M-lok they make is a -5. You can't put a fatter rivet in a skinnier hole. Dead end.
And then, finally, one guy on the forum came through, and honestly I wasn't expecting it. He pointed me straight at Van's own Service Bulletin SB-00036. (A service bulletin is an official notice the manufacturer puts out after the kit ships, usually to fix or clarify something.) And this one calls for CherryMAX rivets in the exact location I'd been losing sleep over.
Just sit with that for a second. Van's builder support wouldn't say a single word about whether CherryMAX was okay here, meanwhile Van's had already published an official document saying yes, CherryMAX, right there, this spot. The answer existed the entire time. I could scream.
So the decision's made. I'm going CherryMAX, they're on order as I type this. And the FEA wasn't a waste either, having those numbers written down means I've got them ready for the next time a question like this pops up, and in this hobby there is always a next time.
All told this little detour cost me the better part of a week. It's not finished, the rivets still have to show up and go in, but I'll report back once they do.

Dimpling- before or after priming?

2026-06-05T00:00:00+00:00

Hello again! it's been another few days! Since then, I've been getting ready for the final assembly of the Horizontal stabilizer.
For now I'd like to write something else here. Priming vs dimpling first. I'm not going to cover the priming debate. There are advantages to both priming first and dimpling first, and I'd like to present here on what I've found doing both.
Priming First</h2>
Priming before you dimple is, without a doubt, the quickest way to process aluminum sheets. This efficiency isn't actually about the painting itself; it's about the mandatory prep work.
Before a single drop of primer touches the metal, you have a strict regime to follow:

Initial scuffing (mandatory) </li>

Chemical etching and rinsing (optional, but recommended) </li>

Isopropyl Alcohol (IPA) wipe-down to remove any lingering residue </li> </ol>
If you dimple the metal before doing this prep, the geometry gets highly complicated. Scuffing around pre-existing dimples is incredibly tedious. The sudden rise in the material causes the scuffing pads to skip, meaning you have to manually scuff around every single rivet hole from multiple directions.
To help imagine this, think of dimples as volcanoes, and the scuffing pads as clouds approaching from the horizon. Even though the clouds may be much higher than the top of a volcano, they are still parted as they roll overhead. So too is the scuffing pad parted as it passes over the dimple.
This is a very real concern. Dimples are the most mission-critical portion of any skin; they hold the aircraft's structure in precise alignment via the rivets. If you're going to get corrosion, the absolute worst place to get it is right inside that rivet hole.
For visualization, here is an example of a skin that I primed before I dimpled. [full size]</a> and after dimpling: [full size]</a> This is after a 36 hour curing window has passed. It's quite easy to see that there is no damage to the coating whatsoever after dimpling. I did not do any analysis with a microscope, but I hope to one day, and that will give us a much better understanding of whether the ekoprime mixture is truly flexing as intended, or if it's just cracking on a scale that we cannot see. From the initial results however, I'm happy to say that It's working quite well!
Dimpling First</h2>
So, why would anyone choose to dimple first? While it makes the cleaning and scuffing process a massive headache, it offers a couple of major advantages that keep many builders firmly in this camp.

Zero Tooling Marks on Fresh Primer: No matter how careful you are with your C-frame or DRDT-2, dimpling dies exert immense pressure. If your primer isn't 100% cured, or if there's a microscopic speck of debris on your die, you risk marring, flaking, or scraping the fresh primer right off the dimple. Dimpling bare metal removes this risk entirely. </li>

Total Corrosion Protection for the Hole: When you dimple a pre-primed hole, the metal stretches. Even if the primer flexes perfectly, the very inner edge of the drilled hole is exposed to high stress. By dimpling first and priming second, your primer acts as a final sealant, completely encapsulating the newly stretched metal, the dimple radius, and the raw inside edge of the hole. </li> </ul>
The downside, of course, is that you'll spend hours with a toothbrush or a cut-down Scotch-Brite pad trying to meticulously clean out every single "volcano" before the paint can fly. I find that dimpling first adds about 40% onto the total priming time.
For my build, priming first has been a massive time-saver, and the EkoPrime has proven resilient enough to handle the stress of the dies. However, for highly critical, moisture-prone areas, taking the extra time to dimple first certainly has its merits.
Now that this debate is settled for my stabilizers, it's finally time to cleco everything together and start squeezing rivets. Stay tuned for the final assembly!

Priming the largest parts yet

2026-05-25T00:00:00+00:00

New priming method</h2>
So the priming process that was used for the rudder was technically incomplete- The general steps for priming aluminum with epoxy (as opposed to chromate) is as follows:

Remove the blue-tape</li>
Scuff surface with scotch-brite</li>
Clean the surface with IPA</li>
Etch with phosphoric acid</li>
Clean with water, then again with IPA</li>
Prime the surface with a fog coat.</li>
After 5 minutes or so, do a filler coat</li>
Wait 36 hours to continue normal assembly.</li> </ol>
These 8 steps are generally accepted as the bespoke way to prime with epoxy. On the rudder however, I completely skipped steps 4 and 5, instead foregoing the phosphor etch completely. In theory, a phosphor etch will increase the surface area of a part by almost 30x, magnifying surface defects that could normally be measured in the low micro-meters, to valleys tens of micrometers deep. I didn't think that this had too much effect on the primer, as scuffing it already did this sort of valley forming effect, but I stand corrected. Here is an image comparing a part before etching (left) with phosphoric to after (right): ([full size]</a>)
As you can see, even though the part was already scuffed, the application of phosphoric acid has intensely dulled the underlying finish, changing the sheet from a reflective undercoating to a silver matte to semigloss finish. Time will tell whether this helps, I'm still waiting for the 36 hour cure window to close.
Priming was rather difficult this time around.</h2>
I've done 4 priming sessions so far in the build process, but this one introduced some new issues into the build. You see, the horizontal stabilizer's spars are the largest non-skin parts in the entire kit. As a result, this priming session we had to get creative with some new mounting points ([full size]</a>)
So, what you're looking at here is my father and I using the garage door rail as a hanginh hook for the horizontal stabilizer. This is immediately before we suited up to spray, and as you can see, this thing is nearly 10 feet long. There are 2 spars, one for the front, and one for the 'mid' section (the rear is just elevator in our case). Then, for the vertical stabilizer parts that we were also priming, we made use of the usual PVC hangar, which has treated us well so far. In total, we used nearly 180g of primer (220g if including water) for these parts, bringing the total to just below 1/2 kg of primer used so far. Vans says priming the inside of an airplane should add about 10 lbs to the aircraft, and I'm not sure that we could even coat the plane with that little primer unless we're only coating the metal-metal contact points. Perhaps there are other VOCs that come off the polymer as it cures which also reduce the weight. There's also residual water in the part A that my calculations do not account for, as well as any and all primer that simply misses the parts. ( [full size]</a> ) Here is the final result. You can also see what the same space looks like when the tarp is not spread. It's held in place by a few bungees, and there's one tarp for each diagonal. Anyway the parts came out looking great, I should be able to complete the vertical stabilizer with the priming that we did today. Just gotta wait for that 36 hour cure window.

-50$: My second unrepairable mistake

2026-05-19T00:00:00+00:00

Hello! It's been a week and a half since my last post "First Rivets", and since then, A lot of progress has been made! The rudder is now complete, and I've made a small toaster rack to hold parts between building sessions. [full size]</a> completed toaster setup. I'll be adding dowels as needed. You can see the completed rudder there, and all primed on the outside. it's kinda a mess, I didn't know what to prime, and where, and now a lot of the outside is also primed. I am really hoping this doesn't affect the paintability, I had something special in mind for the tail. Once the rudder was done, I had the parts for the vertical stabilizer, so I started on that. We got all the way to the priming, And I decided to cut it there. The main reason is that the entire vertical stabilizer is 20 parts, and of those, 12 need priming. It would be a small amount of time, and prepping the entire garage for the whole priming operation would be a lot of work for not a lot of priming. So, naturally, I started on the horizontal stabilizer. The trouble is that I made my second big mistake (the first was the "Dimple Disaster"). The Stabilizer spars are somehow 100$ a piece, which looking at the store seems absurdly cheap for what you get. Anyway, it's like 8 feet long, and you really don't want to make a mistake. Luckily, I made the mistake in a 50$ part instead. The stiffener! [full size]</a> Thar she blows. The countersink is supposed to be in the spar itself, but the part you're seeing is the spar stiffener. Just a matter of misinterpretation in this case. The instructions are very meticulous about marking the orientation of the spar, as it's not symmetrical across the XZ plane- there is a distinct top and bottom to this spar, but in marking that, and ensuring its position, I got so focused, that I made the countersink in the incorrect portion of the spar.. Now, do I think I could get away with this, installing a double flush rivet instead of a single flush? Maybe. The material is thick enough, and the rules allow it. The horizontal stabilizer's stiffener is not the part I want to experiment with for that though. We'll leave that part to the seat mounting rivets.

First Rivets!!

2026-05-09T00:00:00+00:00

After a month of obsessive attention to detail working with these pieces of metal, It's ready for riveting.
The last step in metalwork is priming. As such, 36 hours before the final assembly, I did my final priming for the rudder [full size]</a> I made a new rack that I call the windchimes. it worked extremely well, providing both a good application surface as well as expedited and enhanced handling capabilities. The construction is simple, just a PVC tube with various holes drilled into it to fit the wires you see, works like a charm. Next time I use this, I'll be cutting slots into the pipe on the ends to prevent rotation from weight on a single side, or using elbows for the same. So the day came, and here we were, putting the rudder together. The first rivets in what will soon hopefully be a plane. [full size]</a>

Dimple Disaster

2026-05-06T00:00:00+00:00

Well, I was overdue for a mistake, and oh my word, it was painful. Well, no point in belaboring it, here is my 'oops'. [full size]</a>
As you can see, this is what builders call a "Figure-8". It's not an "uncommon" mistake per-se, and I expected to make one sooner or later. [full size]</a> A close-up of the figure-8 mistake. For now, I've put down the skin, and will be contacting vans builder support for advice. Searching the vans airforce forums, it looks like tho common fixes are to drill to the next rivet size, or to install a "scab" plate, I'll post the response here once they get back to me.

So. Many. Clecos

2026-05-03T00:00:00+00:00

Why the hell do I need 500 + Clecos? The rudder assembly seems to be an ok indicator of why this is the case. 
When 'complete', a cleco'd assembly highly resembles a metallic porcupine, with the temporary fasteners sticking out of every other hole, but From the first assembly you learn just why it's so important to have so many; you really do need to have at minimum a single cleco in every other hole. I tried assembling with every 3rd hole instead of every other, and things didn't line up. I decided the risk was too great- instead of holes all lining up as they should have, with the odd 1 or 2 slight misalignment, every other patch of holes was misaligned. It was obvious that I shouldn't even attempt to start match drilling with such bad practice, so I didn't, and that was very much the right choice. With every 2nd hole, the alignment was perfect. Because the skin is a curved surface, and the clecos only fasten single points together, it's to your benefit to make sure every other hole is properly fastened. [full size]</a>
The rudder assembly from the previous post, resembling the metallic porcupine I spoke of.
As you can see, this is a lot of clecos. I used up one bag of 150, and just barely scratched the second bag, and this is for a single rudder. When I get to the horizontal stabilizers I reckon there's a good chance that I'll be using just about all of them.
[full size]</a>
This is how it rests on the table, I've learned that this is ok, but one must be extremely careful when moving this assembly. the weight when still is distributed evenly across the clecos, which makes it ok to rest on the table, however, if it's moved in any direction without lifting it first, then all of that movement force will go to whichever cleco is supporting the most weight. This may not be a problem when the object is sufficiently light, but it seems like an easy way to warp skins permanently, so I'm going to be extra careful about this in the future, and I think it would be a good idea for other builders to be careful as well.
One last thing I have to gripe about and that'll be it. These skins are way too shiny, use low lighting if you have it when you're clecoing skins. The reflection from the overhead lights in my garage was so intense that it was hard to even see where I was putting in clecos sometimes. I bought some shady (lol) lights from menards that claim to be 20,000 lumens. While I doubt this claim is truthful, the box says it "only" uses 220 watts of electrical power, which meas that my 5 lights are costing me about the same to run if they're all on as it does to park at my local college, though that's not including the savings I'm getting from heating the place with 1,100 Watts of power.. So with these lights on, the aluminum skins with their mirror finish can be uncomfortably bright to look at. I developed the skill of 2-handing clecos, using my finger to trace where the hole is, and guiding the tongue the proper place, and I'm pretty sure I could cleco entire ribs with a blindfold now. Adapt, improvise, overcome I think is what the younguns are saying these days.

Deburring 2

2026-05-01T00:00:00+00:00

Well, it's 1 month in, and I've figured it out.</h2> [full size]</a> This ugly tool is my deburring legendary artifact. What's pictured is Orange hatchbox PLA aged to a rugged 5 years, and in that PLA sits an Avery precision countersink tool. Despite the name "precision", this poor tool has a whole 1/16" of runout. The other end of the very PLA that binds the avery countersink in this heavenly object is itself bound to a 3/8 hex bolt head to 1/4 hex shank adapter, a common 1$ item at every hardware store. All together, the thing is worth 18.03$. Here's the breakdown 16.95$ - Avery #40 CSNK 01.00$ - 3/8" hex bolt, 1/4" shank 00.08$ - PLA - Orange
And with these ingredients you make the thing above. [full size]</a> that's an electric screwdriver, max speed: 220 RPM. perfect speed for deburring quickly without oops-ing too much material off.
It's a common 'trick' that builders use to deburr holes quickly- tickle it with a countersink bit. This device has to make contact with a hole for half a second with no pressure. Doing the math, that's 1.83 revolutions, or ~5.5 passes with a cutting edge. These passes are enough to wipe away nearly all imperfections over a short time. I prefer to hold the tool like an actual screwdriver. This method makes it both faster, and more precise than holding it by the handle.
I'll probably end up back to thinking that deburring is very boring, but each and every trick helps to make this relevant part of building quicker and better.

Soldering Irons

2026-04-27T00:00:00+00:00

It may surprise some to hear that the RV-14 isn't the first aircraft I've worked on- There are 2 other projects which I would consider aircraft of my own work. The RV-14 is certainly the biggest, and the only one which is meant for human use. The other 2 were a paraglider meant for a college project, and before that a drone which I wrote all the software for back in high school. There are a few common elements, but so far only a single common tool: the good ol' soldering iron.
Rarely ever are the irons used for their intended purpose. The most common soldering iron is a wand designed to put out between 15 and 65 watts, with a heating element and thermistor for temperature feedback. They all have a tip, which can take many forms, most commonly a chisel shape for heating material. The intended use is for the 'material' to be an alloy of tin, and some other additives which will be us to bond copper to other copper-like alloys. Across these three projects, I've only used it for this purpose once. One would think my education would endow me with a respect for this vital tool, and that thought would be wrong.
In this adventure, the usage for my soldering iron comes in removing the protective blue layer of the aluminum. This protective layer is only there to keep the odd harsh interaction from leaving permanent marks. [full size]</a> \[depicted above: said protective blue skin. It's made of a layer of thermoplastic around 5 mils thick, stuck to the aluminum by adhesive. It actually makes up a sizable portion of the weight, I'd bet almost 5%\]
This plastic coating is great at doing its job, but it has a bit of trouble on certain aspects of airframe assembly. The layers are just thick enough to make all dimpling operations completely useless. While you can dimple once with the blue skin on, and then once more with it off, this leaves no room for mistakes. According to vans, you get one 'redo' with most skins when it comes to dimpling. Once a skin is dimpled once, it can only be altered again one more time. If there's any more alterations than that, then you've got a 'dead skin'. Dimpling with the blue tape counts as 1 operation, and dimpling without would be another operation. not only does this double your dimpling operations, but you're removing any opportunity to correct your mistakes.
So what is one to do in this predicament? They turn to their soldering iron of course, and ask it to lend a hand. You see, a knife, even a dull one will leave deep scratches in the skins. Each scratch is a stress concentrator, and enough wear cycles can and will lead to catastrophic failure. As you can probably tell, this is where the iron comes in. Heat is the cutting force of these operations. [full size]</a> We start by taping up the holes, doing our best to center the tape over the holes. Just like in painting, this will be used to mask the tape we want to remove early. In this picture I used Scotch Blue Pro, when the stores are open tomorrow, I'm getting the cheapest 1" tape they sell. There's no need to pay the extra for a "pro" product.
Next, you lightly drag the iron (with a light touch, no need to add more pressure than the weight of your index finger) across the skin, using the tape as a boundary [full size]</a>
Here you can see on the left: parts of a 'cut' line. I set my iron to 430F, this is enough to make the score marks. you don't need to get all the way through the plastic either, you only need to reduce the thinckness enough to separate when peeled. slow and steady wins here.
pro 'tip': always practice on the inside part first! vans manual says all scratches must be buffed out no matter how small, and ugly buff marks are harder to see when they're covered by primer, and much more so on the inside of your plane! [full size]</a> here is a close up of the line laid, after the iron has cut through the protective layer. Above the tape is a chalk line that I placed there to aid in alignment. I don't think it was worth the time, just go with the tape by hand. [full size]</a> and finally a macro shot. You can see the skin is separated, and this isn't normally what I go for, instead usually opting for a lighter touch.
After tracing everything, there is only a single step left: PEEL [full size]</a> aaaand! [full size]</a> beautiful! cut exactly along the edges, while leaving the protection in place.
Now, if we take a peek at those corners, we should see.. oh? [full size]</a> oh dear. even my light touch appears to have soiled part of the aluminum.. [full size]</a> One under my macro. For reference, that peeled away portion is just under 1cm in length, so the scratch in this case is superficial. Still, like mentioned above, it will have to be buffed out. I'm confident that at this size, I can scuff it out while prepping for priming the skin.
Aw well, This is why we do the inside first, right?!

Deburring

2026-04-23T00:00:00+00:00

Well, It's 1 week in, and it's already tiring.</h2>
The aluminum in the kit has a few steps that all parts need to run through, doing them over and over and over again is already getting quite boring, but it's a strict necessity. For me, that workflow goes:

Remove the blue tape on any parts facing the inside. On skins, remove a 1-inch strip along the inner holes.</li>
Separate / cut if needed</li>
Debur edges</li>
Scuff with red scotchbrite</li>
Assemble according to the instructions

Match drill</li>
Dimple</li>
If match drilled or dimpled, re-debur the edges.</li> </ul> </li>
Disassemble</li>
Wait until 'priming day'</li>
Clean with denatured alcohol</li>
Prime</li>
Wait 24 hours for primer to 'set up'</li>
Actually follow the instructions</li> </ul>
For those counting at home, that's 13 steps that need to happen before the instructions are even executed on! Of course, I could simply drop the middle 4 instructions, and do the dimpling and match drilling afterward. This would save me 2 steps, one assembly and one disassembly.
Addendum 4/28. Only after I'm writing this did I find out that in most parts of the empennage that vans will dedicate a step to tell you to go prime stuff. While this changes the order of operations, it doesn't really change the size or nature of the list itself.

IT'S HERE!

2026-04-20T00:00:00+00:00

It's been a few days in reality, but with so much excitement going on, I've hardly had time to even think.</h2>
It's here! The long awaited RV-14 empennage kit. It actually arrived on 4/16, but I' have been busy every day since, so here's a small update with the process. [full size]</a>
Arrival</h2>
The arrival process was rather simple- It was hauled in by ABF freight, you have to call them to schedule delivery. After picking a specific day, I swipe my credit card for 943$, and that Thursday I get a call from the driver. I let the driver know what to look for, and where I am, and he manages to find me no problem. [full size]</a> He was happy to unload it and move it the 50 feet needed to get it into my garage. A single signature, and the truck was out of my hair. Thus we're at the first picture.
I was so very excited at the time to open the box and get right in, the allure of a $10,000 box of aircraft parts gave me a sort of decision paralysis that I think was only rivaled by the time I went to the Lego storefront when I was a child. Speaking of 10k, yes, that is what the box cost. the Vans website said $8,400, that's accurate, add $950 for delivery, and sales tax gets you to 10gs easy. This means that 16% of the cost of the kit isn't even the kit itself. If you can do a pickup, definitely consider whether saving the money would be worth the time. Vans is selling this kit for ~34$ a pound of material, which seems like a deal for what they're doing, and I would not expect prices to stay this low for long.
So you get to unpacking and vans makes sure to put all the relevant documents right at the top. you get two manila envelopes right at the top, one with the inventory information, and the other with the build instructions, and my oh my are the build instructions thorough. [full size]</a> You can see that I opened to a specific section, this splits the manual in 2 parts. 1: the build instructions (right side) and 2: everything else (left side). There's also the vertical stabilizer on the left- besides that, they give you a LOT to read through. From this kit, there are at least 150 of these 11x13 pages of instructions that you need to follow, not before you're 1/4 of the way done, but before you're 10%-15% of the way done, depending on how 'optimistic' you are about your time. So, what is this stuff that isn't build instruction? Well, it's more build instruction! This stuff however is general advice, which is meant to be considered throughout the lifetime of the build. General things, like, what's a good rivet, what do you need to redo, what's up with primer, how to dimple, deburring, countersinking, so on and so fourth. They touch on so many things, but it's only an inch deep. A quick brushover says that the deepest topics are written about in no more depth than 3 paragraphs, with the exception of course of the most important thing to get right: Riveting! Inspecting the instructional booklet in awe is something that can have its own logbook, but eventually one must remember that the booklet is not a fictional construct, and that you're here to do the important task of converting the booklet into reality- and that's what I think I'll go do.

[WIP] RV-14: Considerations

2026-04-01T00:00:00+00:00

How much consideration is appropriate in order to accept the undertaking that is building a sheet metal airplane? Going into the project, every aspiring Vans builder knows two specific numbers. 1: The total estimated cost of the project, and 2: The total number of hours one expects to spend. For the RV-14, I expect to spend 165,000$ US on the project, and put in around 2,400 hours. From the vans website</a> says that number should be 1200 hours, and the corresponding page</a> on the vans site claims that the "kit only" cost is 64,300$ US for the non quick-build version. Between tools, paint, engine, avionics, and the rest, I estimate that an additional 100,000$ will be necessary. At a brisk 20 hours per week, that's 2.3 years of labor assuming no weeks off. I'm expecting to be much slower.
My thesis is as follows: You don't need to do as much thinking as I did, and one should know if they are ready to take on an RV-14 by answering 2 questions. One is simple: Is it reasonable for you to be able to produce up to 200,000$ US by the completion of this project? Not the project cost, but the cost and then some. You can do the math, and maybe you are one of the lucky people in this world who has the means. Maybe not, and that's fine! There are less intensive options, and you could send yourself into the air for 1/100th the cost through the world of ultralight aviation (safety notwithstanding). The second question: Assuming you've never cut a single 2x4, could you learn to build a barn by yourself? Without any prior knowledge, could you assemble something that may seem straightforward after completion? If you could do the legwork, the research, the ingenuity to solve the problems associated with this, and you could say this to yourself with honesty and a well-informed answer, then you have the other half of the equation.
At the time of writing, 200,000 US Dollars is about 2/3 the average price of the first house that people buy. It's enough to buy 78 butchered cattle, and can buy 1.43 GWh (120 years, avg. home) of electricity at residential rates. It would indeed buy a very nice RV-14, even a well-off rv-14 which has already been assembled. This goal is set because you will have setbacks throughout the project, and you won't be paying for a plane, but you will be fighting the financial elements every step of the way. A safety net is not enough. Your investments are not enough. You MUST ensure that you are able to fund this project through to the end or else you will have wasted all your invested money, time, and sweat for nothing.
For me, when I first started to consider building an airplane, this was roughly 2x my annual compensation, before taxes, before expenses, and probably before considering an awful lot of very important things.
I'd like to now finally present my thesis: So what? What is the cost of happiness? We have one chance in life to do what we love, and there are too many moments considering whether or not we should do them.

Welcome!

2026-03-31T00:00:00+00:00

Welcome to my blog, Hopefully more will be here in the future!

B</li> </ul>

Tracked hours

2026-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Date</th> Hours</th> Help</th> StartStep</th> EndStep</th> Description</th> Pictures</th></tr></thead>

4/16</td> 1.0</td> </td> -</td> -</td> Received, manual assembled.</td> </td></tr>
4/17</td> 2.0</td> </td> -</td> -</td> Inventory.</td> </td></tr>
4/18</td> 4.0</td> 4.0</td> -</td> -</td> Inventory.</td> </td></tr>
4/19</td> 2.0</td> </td> -</td> 06-01</td> -</td> </td></tr>
4/20</td> 6.0</td> </td> 06-01</td> 07-01</td> deburing- scuffing. Halted on 06 due to missing part. Started on 07 (rudder), gathering parts</td> </td></tr>
4/22</td> 3.0</td> </td> 07-01</td> 07-07</td> Gathered all pieces related to 07. Started on deburring and scuffing.</td> </td></tr>
4/23</td> 3.0</td> </td> 07-01</td> 07-03</td> Finished scuffing, preprocessing. Started to cleco the first plates together.</td> </td></tr>
4/24</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> -</td> </td></tr>
4/25</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> -</td> </td></tr>
4/26</td> 5.0</td> 5.0</td> 07-03</td> 07-03</td> Priming day!</td> </td></tr>
4/27</td> 3.0</td> </td> 07-03</td> 07-07-S1</td> Did not complete 07-05 Steps 2-4, as this would mean riveting parts which priming was not yet complete for.</td> </td></tr>
4/28</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> -</td> </td></tr>
4/29</td> 3.0</td> </td> </td> </td> -</td> </td></tr>
4/30</td> 3.0</td> </td> </td> </td> Time spent match drilling un-clecoing and deburring</td> </td></tr>
5/1</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> -</td> </td></tr>
5/2</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> -</td> </td></tr>
5/3</td> 2.0</td> </td> -</td> </td> All time spent deburring</td> </td></tr>
5/4</td> 2.5</td> </td> -</td> -</td> All time spent deburring, dimpling</td> </td></tr>
5/5</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> -</td> </td></tr>
5/6</td> 2.0</td> </td> -</td> -</td> All time spent deburring, dimpling: Dimple-punched the hole.</td> </td></tr>
5/7</td> 2.0</td> </td> -</td> -</td> All time spent deburring, dimpling.</td> </td></tr>
5/8</td> 4.5</td> </td> </td> -</td> Priming day! Assembly comes next.</td> </td></tr>
5/9</td> 9.0</td> 9.0</td> 07-08</td> 07-10</td> Rudder riveting~!</td> </td></tr>
5/10</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> -</td> </td></tr>
5/11</td> 3.0</td> </td> 07-11</td> 07-12</td> More rudder rivetting!</td> </td></tr>
5/12</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> -</td> </td></tr>
5/13</td> 2.0</td> </td> 06-03-01</td> 06-04-08</td> Started on Vertical Stabilizer while waiting for specialized tools to arrive.</td> </td></tr>
5/14</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> -</td> </td></tr>
5/15</td> 4.0</td> </td> 07-17-01</td> 07-12-03</td> First assembly of rudder</td> </td></tr>
5/16</td> 3.0</td> 2.0</td> 07-12-03</td> 07-12-04</td> Rudder final drilling.</td> </td></tr>
5/17</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> -</td> </td></tr>
5/18</td> 1.5</td> </td> </td> </td> Gathering parts for Hstab.</td> </td></tr>
5/19</td> 2.0</td> </td> 08-02-01</td> 08-02-08</td> Made the mistake in the backing plate.</td> </td></tr>
5/20</td> 3.0</td> </td> 08-02-09</td> 08-04-02</td> Continued on HSTAB- may need to re-order locknuts.</td> </td></tr>
5/21</td> 2.1</td> </td> 08-04-03</td> 08-04-06</td> Completed mock HSTAB assy. disassembled for priming.</td> </td></tr>
5/22</td> 2.0</td> </td> -</td> -</td> Prep VSTAB and HSTAB for paint.</td> </td></tr>
5/23</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> -</td> </td></tr>
5/24</td> 5.0</td> 5.0</td> -</td> -</td> Priming day!</td> </td></tr>
5/25</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> -</td> </td></tr>
5/26</td> 3.0</td> </td> 06-04-04</td> 06-04-06</td> Rivetting together VSTAB</td> </td></tr>
5/27</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> -</td> </td></tr>
5/28</td> 2.0</td> </td> 06-04-06</td> 06-05-01</td> Finish skin riveting of vertical stabilizer</td> </td></tr>
5/29</td> 3.0</td> </td> 06-05-02</td> 06-05-04</td> Vertical stabilizer complete</td> </td></tr>
5/30</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> </td></tr>
5/31</td> 2.0</td> </td> -</td> -</td> Reman the new HS-601 doubler plate</td> </td></tr>
6/1</td> 7.0</td> </td> 08-04-07</td> 08-05-02</td> Designed cradle for HSTAB holder, dimpled some of the ribs.</td> </td></tr>
6/2</td> 1.0</td> </td> 08-06-01</td> 08-06-03</td> Rib dimpling completed.</td> </td></tr>
6/3</td> 3.5</td> </td> 08-07-01</td> 08-08-02</td> Dimpling skins</td> </td></tr>
6/4</td> 7.0</td> </td> -</td> -</td> Prepping for priming. Scuffing, mostly.</td> </td></tr>
6/5</td> 5.0</td> </td> -</td> -</td> Priming day!</td> </td></tr>
6/6</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> </td></tr>
6/7</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> </td></tr>
6/8</td> 4.0</td> </td> 08-10-01</td> 08-10-04</td> Rivetting the Hstab</td> </td></tr>
6/9</td> 1.0</td> </td> 08-10-04</td> 08-11-03</td> placed a few rivets</td> </td></tr>
6/10</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> </td></tr>
6/11</td> 3.0</td> </td> 08-11-03</td> 08-11-04</td> more hstab rivetting</td> </td></tr>
6/12</td> 3.0</td> </td> 08-11-04</td> 08-11-04</td> Rivetting Hstab- with the bird :)</td> </td></tr>
6/13</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> </td></tr>
6/14</td> 2.0</td> </td> 08-11-04</td> 08-11-04</td> STILL rivetting hstab</td> </td></tr>
6/15</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> </td></tr>
6/16</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> </td></tr>
6/17</td> 4.0</td> </td> 08-12-01</td> 08-12-03</td> Cleco'd rear spar to hstab</td> </td></tr>
6/18</td> 3.0</td> </td> 08-12-03</td> 08-12-03</td> Did a couple of hstab rivets in the rear spar</td> </td></tr>
6/19</td> 3.0</td> </td> 08-12-03</td> 08-12-04</td> Got proper sets, finished hstab rear rivets.</td> </td></tr>
6/20</td> 1.0</td> </td> 08-12-04</td> 08-12-04</td> Hstab completed, except for 9 rivets I'll have to revisit later.</td> </td></tr>
6/21 - 6/25</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> </td></tr>
6/26</td> 1.0</td> </td> 09-00-0</td> 09-02-07</td> Pulling elevator parts out of inventory.</td> </td></tr>
6/27</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> </td></tr>
6/28</td> 6.0</td> 6.0</td> 09-02-07</td> 09-06-04</td> Started on Elevator mock assembly.</td> </td></tr>
6/29</td> 3.0</td> </td> 09-07-01</td> 09-08-01</td> More mock assembly</td> </td></tr>
6/30</td> 3.0</td> </td> 09-08-02</td> 09-09-01</td> Elevator clecoing, #30 final drilled a few holes.</td> </td></tr>
7/1</td> 1.0</td> </td> 09-09-02</td> 09-09-02</td> Elevator clecoing, trailing edge trimming.</td> </td></tr>
7/2</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> </td></tr>
7/3</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> </td></tr>
7/4</td> 6.0</td> 6.0</td> 09-09-03</td> 09-09-07</td> </td> </td></tr>
7-5</td> 2.0</td> </td> 09-09-07</td> 09-09-07</td> </td> </td></tr>
7/6</td> 2.0</td> </td> </td> </td> Dimpling Elevator skins</td> </td></tr>
7/7</td> 2.0</td> </td> </td> </td> Finished dimpling elevator trim tab skins</td> </td></tr>
7/8</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> </td></tr>
7/9</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> </td></tr>
7/10</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> </td></tr>
7/11</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> </td></tr>
7/12</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> </td></tr>
7/13</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> </td></tr>
7/14</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> </td></tr>
7/15</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> </td></tr>
7/16</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> </td></tr>
7/17</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> </td></tr>
7/18</td> 5.0</td> 10.0</td> </td> </td> dimpling elevator skins</td> </td></tr>
7/19</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> </td></tr>
7/20</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> </td></tr>
7/21</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> </td></tr>
7/22</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> </td></tr>
7/23</td> 3.0</td> </td> </td> </td> Scuffing elevator for priming.</td> </td></tr>
7/24</td> 3.0</td> </td> </td> </td> More scuffing</td> </td></tr>
7/25</td> 4.0</td> </td> </td> </td> Acid etching, rinsing, hanging.</td> </td></tr>
7/26</td> 6.0</td> </td> </td> </td> Priming day</td> </td></tr>
7/27</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> </td></tr>
7/28</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> </td></tr>
7/29</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> </td></tr>
7/30</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> </td></tr>
7/31</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> </td></tr>
8/1</td> 2.0</td> </td> </td> </td> Prep for Trim tab rib installation.</td> </td></tr>
8/2</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> </td></tr>
8/3</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> </td></tr>
8/4</td> 2.2</td> </td> </td> </td> Trim tab assembly for elevator.</td> [1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>), 3</a> (full</a>), 4</a> (full</a>), 5</a> (full</a>), 6</a> (full</a>), 7</a> (full</a>), 8</a> (full</a>), 9</a> (full</a>), 10</a> (full</a>), 11</a> (full</a>), 12</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
8/5</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> </td></tr>
8/6</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> [1</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
8/7</td> 1.0</td> </td> </td> </td> Trim tab in storage, assembling parts for the main portion of the elevator</td> </td></tr>
8/8</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> </td></tr>
8/9</td> 5.0</td> 3.0</td> </td> </td> Began main control surface assembly for elevator.</td> </td></tr>
8/10</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> </td></tr>
8/11</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> </td></tr>
8/12</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> </td></tr>
8/13</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> </td></tr>
8/14</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> </td></tr>
8/15</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> </td></tr>
8/16</td> 1.2</td> </td> </td> </td> Rivetted ribs to rear elevator spar</td> </td></tr>
8/17</td> 2.0</td> </td> </td> </td> Continued riveting ribs to rear elevator spar</td> </td></tr>
8/18</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> [1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>), 3</a> (full</a>), 4</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
8/19</td> 1.5</td> </td> </td> </td> riveted piano hinge to elevator body for trim tab.</td> </td></tr>
8/20</td> 3.0</td> </td> </td> </td> Back-riveting ribs onto skins</td> [1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>), 3</a> (full</a>), 4</a> (full</a>), 5</a> (full</a>), 6</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
8/21</td> 3.0</td> </td> </td> </td> Back-riveting continues, servo mount as well.</td> [1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>), 3</a> (full</a>), 4</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
8/22</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> </td></tr>
8/23</td> 6.0</td> 8.0</td> </td> </td> first time putting the elevator skins together to form a surface.</td> </td></tr>
8/24</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> [1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>), 3</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
8/25</td> 3.0</td> </td> </td> </td> Applying tank sealant to rear rib</td> [1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>), 3</a> (full</a>), 4</a> (full</a>), 5</a> (full</a>), 6</a> (full</a>), 7</a> (full</a>), 8</a> (full</a>), 9</a> (full</a>), 10</a> (full</a>), 11</a> (full</a>), 12</a> (full</a>), 13</a> (full</a>), 14</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
---</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> </td></tr>
8/29</td> 2.0</td> </td> </td> </td> Last rear rib application of tank sealant.</td> [1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>), 3</a> (full</a>), 4</a> (full</a>), 5</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
8/30</td> 4.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> [1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>), 3</a> (full</a>), 4</a> (full</a>), 5</a> (full</a>), 6</a> (full</a>), 7</a> (full</a>), 8</a> (full</a>), 9</a> (full</a>), 10</a> (full</a>), 11</a> (full</a>), 12</a> (full</a>), 13</a> (full</a>), 14</a> (full</a>), 15</a> (full</a>), 16</a> (full</a>), 17</a> (full</a>), 18</a> (full</a>), 19</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
8/31</td> 1.0</td> </td> </td> </td> Mirror inspection- no progress on elevator</td> [1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>), 3</a> (full</a>), 4</a> (full</a>), 5</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
9/1</td> 2.0</td> </td> </td> </td> Clecoing skins on, first rivets in skin. (front spar)</td> [1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
9/2</td> 2.0</td> </td> </td> </td> Riveting front spars in elevator (contd)</td> [1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
9/3</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> No progress, just funny pic</td> [1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>), 3</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
9/6</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> [1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>), 3</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
---</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> </td></tr>
9/9</td> 3.0</td> </td> </td> </td> Made and drilled some more front spar rivets.</td> </td></tr>
---</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> </td></tr>
9/13</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> [1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
9/14</td> 3.5</td> </td> </td> </td> Set double sided tape for trailing edge.</td> [1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
9/16</td> 3.0</td> </td> </td> </td> Flame-mastering the trailing edge PVC ribs, laying out the weights.</td> [1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>), 3</a> (full</a>), 4</a> (full</a>), 5</a> (full</a>), 6</a> (full</a>), 7</a> (full</a>), 8</a> (full</a>), 9</a> (full</a>), 10</a> (full</a>), 11</a> (full</a>), 12</a> (full</a>), 13</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
9/20</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> [1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
9/21</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> [1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
9/22</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> [1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>), 3</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
9/23</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> [1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
9/24</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> [1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>), 3</a> (full</a>), 4</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
9/26</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> [1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>), 3</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
10/4</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> [1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>), 3</a> (full</a>), 4</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
10/10</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> [1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
10/11</td> 0.0</td> </td> </td> </td> </td> [1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>), 3</a> (full</a>), 4</a> (full</a>), 5</a> (full</a>), 6</a> (full</a>), 7</a> (full</a>), 8</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr> </tbody></table>

Date</th>	Hours</th>	Help</th>	StartStep</th>	EndStep</th>	Description</th>	Pictures</th></tr></thead>
4/16</td>	1.0</td>	</td>	-</td>	-</td>	Received, manual assembled.</td>	</td></tr>
4/17</td>	2.0</td>	</td>	-</td>	-</td>	Inventory.</td>	</td></tr>
4/18</td>	4.0</td>	4.0</td>	-</td>	-</td>	Inventory.</td>	</td></tr>
4/19</td>	2.0</td>	</td>	-</td>	06-01</td>	-</td>	</td></tr>
4/20</td>	6.0</td>	</td>	06-01</td>	07-01</td>	deburing- scuffing. Halted on 06 due to missing part. Started on 07 (rudder), gathering parts</td>	</td></tr>
4/22</td>	3.0</td>	</td>	07-01</td>	07-07</td>	Gathered all pieces related to 07. Started on deburring and scuffing.</td>	</td></tr>
4/23</td>	3.0</td>	</td>	07-01</td>	07-03</td>	Finished scuffing, preprocessing. Started to cleco the first plates together.</td>	</td></tr>
4/24</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	-</td>	</td></tr>
4/25</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	-</td>	</td></tr>
4/26</td>	5.0</td>	5.0</td>	07-03</td>	07-03</td>	Priming day!</td>	</td></tr>
4/27</td>	3.0</td>	</td>	07-03</td>	07-07-S1</td>	Did not complete 07-05 Steps 2-4, as this would mean riveting parts which priming was not yet complete for.</td>	</td></tr>
4/28</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	-</td>	</td></tr>
4/29</td>	3.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	-</td>	</td></tr>
4/30</td>	3.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	Time spent match drilling un-clecoing and deburring</td>	</td></tr>
5/1</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	-</td>	</td></tr>
5/2</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	-</td>	</td></tr>
5/3</td>	2.0</td>	</td>	-</td>	</td>	All time spent deburring</td>	</td></tr>
5/4</td>	2.5</td>	</td>	-</td>	-</td>	All time spent deburring, dimpling</td>	</td></tr>
5/5</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	-</td>	</td></tr>
5/6</td>	2.0</td>	</td>	-</td>	-</td>	All time spent deburring, dimpling: Dimple-punched the hole.</td>	</td></tr>
5/7</td>	2.0</td>	</td>	-</td>	-</td>	All time spent deburring, dimpling.</td>	</td></tr>
5/8</td>	4.5</td>	</td>	</td>	-</td>	Priming day! Assembly comes next.</td>	</td></tr>
5/9</td>	9.0</td>	9.0</td>	07-08</td>	07-10</td>	Rudder riveting~!</td>	</td></tr>
5/10</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	-</td>	</td></tr>
5/11</td>	3.0</td>	</td>	07-11</td>	07-12</td>	More rudder rivetting!</td>	</td></tr>
5/12</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	-</td>	</td></tr>
5/13</td>	2.0</td>	</td>	06-03-01</td>	06-04-08</td>	Started on Vertical Stabilizer while waiting for specialized tools to arrive.</td>	</td></tr>
5/14</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	-</td>	</td></tr>
5/15</td>	4.0</td>	</td>	07-17-01</td>	07-12-03</td>	First assembly of rudder</td>	</td></tr>
5/16</td>	3.0</td>	2.0</td>	07-12-03</td>	07-12-04</td>	Rudder final drilling.</td>	</td></tr>
5/17</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	-</td>	</td></tr>
5/18</td>	1.5</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	Gathering parts for Hstab.</td>	</td></tr>
5/19</td>	2.0</td>	</td>	08-02-01</td>	08-02-08</td>	Made the mistake in the backing plate.</td>	</td></tr>
5/20</td>	3.0</td>	</td>	08-02-09</td>	08-04-02</td>	Continued on HSTAB- may</em> need to re-order locknuts.</td>	</td></tr>
5/21</td>	2.1</td>	</td>	08-04-03</td>	08-04-06</td>	Completed mock HSTAB assy. disassembled for priming.</td>	</td></tr>
5/22</td>	2.0</td>	</td>	-</td>	-</td>	Prep VSTAB and HSTAB for paint.</td>	</td></tr>
5/23</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	-</td>	</td></tr>
5/24</td>	5.0</td>	5.0</td>	-</td>	-</td>	Priming day!</td>	</td></tr>
5/25</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	-</td>	</td></tr>
5/26</td>	3.0</td>	</td>	06-04-04</td>	06-04-06</td>	Rivetting together VSTAB</td>	</td></tr>
5/27</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	-</td>	</td></tr>
5/28</td>	2.0</td>	</td>	06-04-06</td>	06-05-01</td>	Finish skin riveting of vertical stabilizer</td>	</td></tr>
5/29</td>	3.0</td>	</td>	06-05-02</td>	06-05-04</td>	Vertical stabilizer complete</td>	</td></tr>
5/30</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
5/31</td>	2.0</td>	</td>	-</td>	-</td>	Reman the new HS-601 doubler plate</td>	</td></tr>
6/1</td>	7.0</td>	</td>	08-04-07</td>	08-05-02</td>	Designed cradle for HSTAB holder, dimpled some of the ribs.</td>	</td></tr>
6/2</td>	1.0</td>	</td>	08-06-01</td>	08-06-03</td>	Rib dimpling completed.</td>	</td></tr>
6/3</td>	3.5</td>	</td>	08-07-01</td>	08-08-02</td>	Dimpling skins</td>	</td></tr>
6/4</td>	7.0</td>	</td>	-</td>	-</td>	Prepping for priming. Scuffing, mostly.</td>	</td></tr>
6/5</td>	5.0</td>	</td>	-</td>	-</td>	Priming day!</td>	</td></tr>
6/6</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
6/7</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
6/8</td>	4.0</td>	</td>	08-10-01</td>	08-10-04</td>	Rivetting the Hstab</td>	</td></tr>
6/9</td>	1.0</td>	</td>	08-10-04</td>	08-11-03</td>	placed a few rivets</td>	</td></tr>
6/10</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
6/11</td>	3.0</td>	</td>	08-11-03</td>	08-11-04</td>	more hstab rivetting</td>	</td></tr>
6/12</td>	3.0</td>	</td>	08-11-04</td>	08-11-04</td>	Rivetting Hstab- with the bird :)</td>	</td></tr>
6/13</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
6/14</td>	2.0</td>	</td>	08-11-04</td>	08-11-04</td>	STILL rivetting hstab</td>	</td></tr>
6/15</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
6/16</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
6/17</td>	4.0</td>	</td>	08-12-01</td>	08-12-03</td>	Cleco'd rear spar to hstab</td>	</td></tr>
6/18</td>	3.0</td>	</td>	08-12-03</td>	08-12-03</td>	Did a couple of hstab rivets in the rear spar</td>	</td></tr>
6/19</td>	3.0</td>	</td>	08-12-03</td>	08-12-04</td>	Got proper sets, finished hstab rear rivets.</td>	</td></tr>
6/20</td>	1.0</td>	</td>	08-12-04</td>	08-12-04</td>	Hstab completed, except for 9 rivets I'll have to revisit later.</td>	</td></tr>
6/21 - 6/25</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
6/26</td>	1.0</td>	</td>	09-00-0</td>	09-02-07</td>	Pulling elevator parts out of inventory.</td>	</td></tr>
6/27</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
6/28</td>	6.0</td>	6.0</td>	09-02-07</td>	09-06-04</td>	Started on Elevator mock assembly.</td>	</td></tr>
6/29</td>	3.0</td>	</td>	09-07-01</td>	09-08-01</td>	More mock assembly</td>	</td></tr>
6/30</td>	3.0</td>	</td>	09-08-02</td>	09-09-01</td>	Elevator clecoing, #30 final drilled a few holes.</td>	</td></tr>
7/1</td>	1.0</td>	</td>	09-09-02</td>	09-09-02</td>	Elevator clecoing, trailing edge trimming.</td>	</td></tr>
7/2</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
7/3</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
7/4</td>	6.0</td>	6.0</td>	09-09-03</td>	09-09-07</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
7-5</td>	2.0</td>	</td>	09-09-07</td>	09-09-07</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
7/6</td>	2.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	Dimpling Elevator skins</td>	</td></tr>
7/7</td>	2.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	Finished dimpling elevator trim tab skins</td>	</td></tr>
7/8</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
7/9</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
7/10</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
7/11</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
7/12</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
7/13</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
7/14</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
7/15</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
7/16</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
7/17</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
7/18</td>	5.0</td>	10.0</td>	</td>	</td>	dimpling elevator skins</td>	</td></tr>
7/19</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
7/20</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
7/21</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
7/22</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
7/23</td>	3.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	Scuffing elevator for priming.</td>	</td></tr>
7/24</td>	3.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	More scuffing</td>	</td></tr>
7/25</td>	4.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	Acid etching, rinsing, hanging.</td>	</td></tr>
7/26</td>	6.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	Priming day</td>	</td></tr>
7/27</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
7/28</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
7/29</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
7/30</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
7/31</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
8/1</td>	2.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	Prep for Trim tab rib installation.</td>	</td></tr>
8/2</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
8/3</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
8/4</td>	2.2</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	Trim tab assembly for elevator.</td>	[1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>), 3</a> (full</a>), 4</a> (full</a>), 5</a> (full</a>), 6</a> (full</a>), 7</a> (full</a>), 8</a> (full</a>), 9</a> (full</a>), 10</a> (full</a>), 11</a> (full</a>), 12</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
8/5</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
8/6</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	[1</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
8/7</td>	1.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	Trim tab in storage, assembling parts for the main portion of the elevator</td>	</td></tr>
8/8</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
8/9</td>	5.0</td>	3.0</td>	</td>	</td>	Began main control surface assembly for elevator.</td>	</td></tr>
8/10</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
8/11</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
8/12</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
8/13</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
8/14</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
8/15</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
8/16</td>	1.2</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	Rivetted ribs to rear elevator spar</td>	</td></tr>
8/17</td>	2.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	Continued riveting ribs to rear elevator spar</td>	</td></tr>
8/18</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	[1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>), 3</a> (full</a>), 4</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
8/19</td>	1.5</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	riveted piano hinge to elevator body for trim tab.</td>	</td></tr>
8/20</td>	3.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	Back-riveting ribs onto skins</td>	[1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>), 3</a> (full</a>), 4</a> (full</a>), 5</a> (full</a>), 6</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
8/21</td>	3.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	Back-riveting continues, servo mount as well.</td>	[1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>), 3</a> (full</a>), 4</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
8/22</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
8/23</td>	6.0</td>	8.0</td>	</td>	</td>	first time putting the elevator skins together to form a surface.</td>	</td></tr>
8/24</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	[1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>), 3</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
8/25</td>	3.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	Applying tank sealant to rear rib</td>	[1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>), 3</a> (full</a>), 4</a> (full</a>), 5</a> (full</a>), 6</a> (full</a>), 7</a> (full</a>), 8</a> (full</a>), 9</a> (full</a>), 10</a> (full</a>), 11</a> (full</a>), 12</a> (full</a>), 13</a> (full</a>), 14</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
---</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
8/29</td>	2.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	Last rear rib application of tank sealant.</td>	[1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>), 3</a> (full</a>), 4</a> (full</a>), 5</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
8/30</td>	4.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	[1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>), 3</a> (full</a>), 4</a> (full</a>), 5</a> (full</a>), 6</a> (full</a>), 7</a> (full</a>), 8</a> (full</a>), 9</a> (full</a>), 10</a> (full</a>), 11</a> (full</a>), 12</a> (full</a>), 13</a> (full</a>), 14</a> (full</a>), 15</a> (full</a>), 16</a> (full</a>), 17</a> (full</a>), 18</a> (full</a>), 19</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
8/31</td>	1.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	Mirror inspection- no progress on elevator</td>	[1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>), 3</a> (full</a>), 4</a> (full</a>), 5</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
9/1</td>	2.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	Clecoing skins on, first rivets in skin. (front spar)</td>	[1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
9/2</td>	2.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	Riveting front spars in elevator (contd)</td>	[1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
9/3</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	No progress, just funny pic</td>	[1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>), 3</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
9/6</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	[1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>), 3</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
---</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
9/9</td>	3.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	Made and drilled some more front spar rivets.</td>	</td></tr>
---</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td></tr>
9/13</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	[1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
9/14</td>	3.5</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	Set double sided tape for trailing edge.</td>	[1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
9/16</td>	3.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	Flame-mastering the trailing edge PVC ribs, laying out the weights.</td>	[1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>), 3</a> (full</a>), 4</a> (full</a>), 5</a> (full</a>), 6</a> (full</a>), 7</a> (full</a>), 8</a> (full</a>), 9</a> (full</a>), 10</a> (full</a>), 11</a> (full</a>), 12</a> (full</a>), 13</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
9/20</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	[1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
9/21</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	[1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
9/22</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	[1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>), 3</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
9/23</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	[1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
9/24</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	[1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>), 3</a> (full</a>), 4</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
9/26</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	[1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>), 3</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
10/4</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	[1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>), 3</a> (full</a>), 4</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
10/10</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	[1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr>
10/11</td>	0.0</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	</td>	[1</a> (full</a>), 2</a> (full</a>), 3</a> (full</a>), 4</a> (full</a>), 5</a> (full</a>), 6</a> (full</a>), 7</a> (full</a>), 8</a> (full</a>)]</td></tr> </tbody></table>

rv-14 blog

Blue film, and drilling out rivets

SB-00043: sealing a spar you can't reach into

Tank sealant: what it is, and why my trim tab needed it

[Design Deviation] Hstab Cherry MAX rivets

Dimpling- before or after priming?

Priming First</h2> Priming before you dimple is, without a doubt, the quickest way to process aluminum sheets. This efficiency isn't actually about the painting itself; it's about the mandatory prep work.</p> Before a single drop of primer touches the metal, you have a strict regime to follow:</p>

Priming the largest parts yet

New priming method</h2> So the priming process that was used for the rudder was technically incomplete- The general steps for priming aluminum with epoxy (as opposed to chromate) is as follows:</p>

-50$: My second unrepairable mistake

First Rivets!!

Dimple Disaster

So. Many. Clecos

Deburring 2

Soldering Irons

Deburring

IT'S HERE!

[WIP] RV-14: Considerations

Welcome!

Tracked hours