Elevator, Right Side

The right elevator is coming along but I had trouble getting to the two rivets shown in the picture below that are back in the gap at the top left of the blue-covered skin. Turns out I was assembling the tip rib incorrectly; the tip skin goes underneath the main skin, I had the main skin underneath the tip skin. By doing it the right way, the main skin can be opened up, providing good access to these rivets. When I followed the directions, it was easy.

On the bottom skin, when attaching it to the spar, the instructions said I could use either all pop rivets or a mix of pop rivets and the much stronger squeezed rivets. I chose to use a mix of pop and squeezed rivets. This made it much harder. I think if I were to build another elevator, I would just use all pulled rivets for the bottom skin to spar; much easier and less grief than having a combo of the two.

For bonding the trailing edge, I used the T88 epoxy instead of the tank sealant. The T88 is mentioned on the plans as an alternate material. I hoped it will provide less pillowing and better bond on the trailing edge than what I had on the rudder. But I have a feeling the pillowing and bonding is due to the metal being riveted so close to the edge, not the bond material. OK I give, the main reason I used the epoxy is because it is a 1 to 1 mix, whereas the tank sealant is a 4.5 to 1 mix. I didn't have a good enough scale to weigh out the sealant and I didn't want to wait three days for Amazon to bring me one. Previously on the rudder, when I mixed the tank sealant, I discovered my Target scale did not read fractions of a gram, so I guessed the mix ratios and luckily got it right.

In summary the right elevator took quite a bit longer than the rudder; mostly because there are many more rivets and the lessons learned on the rudder provided a bit of education and familiarity.

Once the epoxy dried, I riveted the trailing edge per the instructions. This went much better than the rudder, but still had the same seperation of the skin very slightly from the AEX tapered strip. I eliminated puckering between the rivets by gently squeezing out the epoxy with a seaming pliers. I think the only way to keep the skin tight tot the trailing edge is to use some structural adhesive, like JB weld, or to edge break the trailing edge before dimpling. I will try the edge break method on the left training edge.Edge breaking puts a slight crease in the skin edge so it sits tight to the AEX tapered piece. This is described in the plans.

Overall I am happy with the right elevator. I think I could do a perfect job on the left now with this experience. (Right !!! wishful thinking see next post.)