Rudder Completion

With the skins reinforced, I moved on to the skeleton.  First, I put together the bottom assembly of the spar.  This included the mounting bracket for the control wires, as well a reinforcement plate and the bottom rib.  Because of the tools I had available at the time, I ended up going to a metal shop in town to get the shims made for me.  When I tried to make them myself, I ended up with an ugly bent shim, which wasn't really helpful.

Next, I began assembling the top counterweight.  The counterweight consists of two ribs with a heavy weight in between.  The skin would be hard to work with if it was intended to cover all of this at once, so I also had to place a small piece of aluminum around the ribs.

Heres the rib with the skin clecoed on.

This was a lot of match drilling, with the compressor having to run at least once for each side.  Luckily its far enough away that it isn't too loud.  After I had deburred all of the holes, I removed the blue protective plastic.

And primed the skeleton pieces.

Here is the first rivets put into the rudder spar, and then the bottom with the pop rivets in place.

Here is where the weight sits.  Once this was on, it was just a matter of riveting on the skins!  Sort of...

The trailing edge had to be carefully riveted to make it as straight as possible.  I ended up putting a rivet in every sixth hole, and then using my back rivet plate to keep the edge straight as I riveted in between.  I was surprisingly happy with the result!

 Here are the rivets, smooshed on both sides so they remain flush on both sides.

 Then everyones favorite, rolling leading edges.

 And rudder and horizontal stabilizer put together!  Rudder complete!