Section 7 Rudder

Another heavy "learning by mistakes" Section.
Let's review page by page what happened
Page 07-02
Step 7: Some difficulties to have the spar caps as flush to the rudder spar as shown on Figure 3. 


Page 07-03
Step 1: I had more space than needed for the upper hinge  bracket and the upper hinge assembly although it is specified to not put more than one AN960-10 washer. I noticed that when tightening the bolt it is possible to suppress the space. I hope it's OK ...


Step 2: no indication provided about the rivets direction. I chose to put the manufactured head on the side visible rather than inside the skin: big mistake! In this position, the shop head  is on the rib side. As the rib is much thinner than the spar, the rivet once squeezed pushes the rib's flange away from the spar! If you put the manufactured head on the rib side, you can push the head while squeezing, preventing the rib flange to move away from the spar.  I had the consolation to find out that another builder had made the same mistake but too late (see Schmetterling's blog).
Lesson learned: always read other builders blogs before you make a mistake!


Step 3: The order provided by VAN is wrong because if you first rivet the hinge bracket first, there is a chance that you will create deformation of the  spar caps  which will not be flushed with the spar when the remaining holes are riveted. You should rivet first the "remaining holes" and then the spar caps.


The rest of the section went pretty well, although I got tired of struggling with the rivet squeezer and managed to do the improvement of the Avery Hand Squeezer listed earlier.


The best part:
Here is a draggy rudder:

And one hour and 200+ pulled rivets later (I kid you not) here is a finished rudder:

I did it with the help of a pneumatic rivet puller from Harbor Freight: a must for the RV-12 builder and a great investment for $70 (compared to the $300 of the Avery Hand Squeezer).