6 Jun 2024 - 2 hours
It had been a few days so it felt good to get back to work on the plane! I started by deburring and dimpling the left elevator trim motor doubler piece. It takes #6 screws which needs a #27 drill bit. I spent a few minutes looking through my drill bits and didn't find a #27, which is weird, because the RV-7 and RV-8 have identical elevators so I've built this part before, so I must have drilled these screw holes out to #27, right...? Nope, these particular holes (and the associated nut plate rivet holes) come predrilled to final size so just slap the #27 dimple die into the squeezer and away we go!I dimpled all the elevator stiffeners using my patented clamp-the-squeezer-to-the-bench method and then I removed the blue plastic from the outside of the elevator skins. Followed that up by deburring all the holes in the skins and then started deburring the edges of the elevator skins. I don't necessarily need to do that just yet, but these skins seem extra sharp and I don't want to cut myself on them so I might as well do it now. I did the right skin edges but still have the left one to go.
No pictures from tonight as the parts basically look like they did when I started and the work was all terribly dull.