8 Jun 2024 - 3.5 hours

More work on the elevators today. I drilled the doubler pieces to the right elevator spar. There are now double the doubler pieces, with E-610 and E-611 on the aft side of the spar and E-00001A and E-00001B on the front side. Here they are clecoed to the spar after drilling.

Next I continued with the fitting the lead counterweight. This takes lots of filing and fiddling to get it to fit. I ended up rounding over the top, angling the sides a bit, and taking out quite a bit off the bottom also to get it to slide into the pocket. I also realized that lead is really soft when I dropped the weight on the concrete and the weight dented. To that end, rather than file much more off the bottom, I whacked it with a hammer to move some material from the high points where it was interfering to the low points where there was space and it worked great!

I drilled the two holes through the counterbalance skin into the lead. I started with #40 holes and them jumped up to the specified #12 holes. Drilling lead is pretty horrible as it grabs the bit and gums up the works. Lots of Boelube helped get it done.

Here's a shot of the right elevator skeleton after drilling the counterbalance assembly and root rib (already detached in this shot) to the spar.

I kept on trucking with lots of deburring. I got the right elevator bits all deburred, and started on the left getting its spar done along with one of the counterweight ribs.