April 12th, 2001
Oops. Rule one in working on projects.... NEVER assume anything. I fell back on my "rudder building" training, and drilled out all the spar doublers with a #30 bit for A4 rivets. The drawings show A5 rivets, so Genious Boy (that would be me) got to go back and smoke an hour redrilling those holes to the correct size.
Actually, today was a pretty short day in the shop. Mainly the work was centered on drilling the rivet holes between the rib stations on the front spar, and shaping the front spar attachment brackets so they don't interfere with the stabilizer skins.
The rest of the night was spent figuring out how we're going to avoid the "pimching in" at the ends of the stabilizer spars. According to the plans, the first two rib stations nearest the center line sit atop the two doublers on the front spar and the one doubler on the rear spar. The outside rib station lies beyond the length of the spar doublers. The result is that, unlike the two inboard ribs, the outboard ribs sit directly on the spar web. This makes them effectively .040 inches shorter then the other ribs. It doesn't sound like much, but it seems to me that this distance will be amplified at the end of the spars. The other problem is, there's a doubler on the top of the rear spar, but the doubler on the bottom of the rear spar is on the other side. The rib will sit atop the doubler on the top, and the web on the bottom, giving the rib a downward tilt. I suppose it must be okay, since others have done this with little problem, so I'll just have to close my eyes and make a leap of faith, rather then over-analyze this until my brain explodes.
Tomorrow is Good Friday. Good for Building, I say. Should make some significant progress tomorrow... Famous last words.