Vertical Stabilizer deburring and metal finishing

Tonight I simply finished up all the metal prep work on the vertical stabilizer. I deburred all the holes, and then finished all the edges on the ribs, spars and skins. The spar doubler I spent a good bit of time on getting it smooth since its a heavy piece of aluminum. I started on my bench grinder to break the edges, and then finished them off on the scotchbrite wheel. I used a deburring tool to round off the edges of the lightening holes and then use a scotchbrite pad to smooth those down. It came out smooth:

Then I finished up the night by dimpling all of the holes, while skipping the ones destined to have nutplates for the fiberglass fairing. I used the DRDT2 for most of them, and the squeezer for a few, and finally the pop rivet dimple die set for those last two in the nose rib.

That wrapped it up for the night. I don’t have any work backlogged on my bench because I am waiting on this weekend so I can scuff, clean and prime the horizontal and vertical stabilizer parts/skins. I am spraying outside, so I need a day with plenty of daylight.

Only a few photos from tonights work, since it was mainly metal prep. Heres what I took: https://goo.gl/photos/kEVxThYQk7GBvHFf6

Hours Worked: 3
Tagged . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply