H. Stab Part I
This past week I’ve been working on the horizontal stabilizer. This one requires quite a bit of holes in ribs to be match drilled so there is a lot of carefully lining parts up and checking fitment before drilling. It’s been reinforced that it’s really critical to read and understand the instructions and drawings fully before making any cuts or drilling holes. I haven’t made any big mistakes on this assembly that requires modifying or re-ordering parts, but there have been a couple times where it would be easy to make one of those mistakes.
Anyway, the fit-up of all the components took basically all last weekend and this week I have been deburring, dimpling, and priming all the components (as weather allows). We got about 8 inches of snow at my house this week which was pretty cool.
As far as priming, I have been going with the philosophy of priming all internal components (ribs, spars, etc…) and just the rivet lines on the inside of the skins. After everything has been deburred and dimpled (essentially ready to rivet), I scuff up all of the area that will see primer with a scotchbrite pad. This roughens the surface which allows the primer to stick better and removes the alclad from the parts that have it. I then wipe the entire part down with acetone. Then I just use rattle can zinc phosphate primer to coat the parts. Since I have time right now waiting on the fuselage, I don’t mind putting the time into this, but once I’m a little more pressed, I may reduce the amount of parts I’m priming. It really adds time.
I was able to finish priming all the parts for the h stab today and began riveting the spars. I finished the aft spar and am about halfway done with the front spar. More info on that next time.
