“Congratulations! You’ve finished the first major sub-assembly on your new airplane.”

I’ve read that sentence at the end of the Horizontal Stabilizer section in the RV-3 assembly manual probably 100 times since acquiring my kit last summer. Now, it’s finally true. There was a time a few months ago when I wondered if I could even get this far, that maybe an airplane like the RV-12 was more in line with my experience and skill level. But honestly, now that I’ve seen what I can do and I’ve felt the “extra” satisfaction that comes with the large amount of fabrication needed in the -3, I’m glad Van’s original design is my chosen path.

Stop laughing, you can’t tell me you’ve never gone out into the workshop in your pajamas.

In addition to the basic fabrication and finishing of parts like measuring, cutting, filing, drilling, deburring, fluting, cleaning, priming and the like, these are a few new skills I learned or practiced while I built my stab. Items marked with * are things I got an extra hand, extra muscle or extra brain power for from Ben. If he’s in the shop when I am, he’s working on his RV-8’s instrument panel, engine rebuild, or some other task. (That's his -8's vertical stab hanging above the work bench.) The good man that he is, he will begrudgingly come over to my half of the garage if I ask him to help hold a piece while I dimple it, or give me an opinion on my craftsmanship, or hand-squeeze a 1/8” rivet. (I will also do the same for him—equally begrudgingly—except for things involving muscles.) He did spend at least half a day engineering and constructing my jig—most woodworking involving materials bigger than 1/8” square balsa is over my head. :-P Anyway, here’s the list:

Build a Jig*

Clamp skins to frame—After trying Van’s way and hating it, I’m audacious enough to think my way was better. :-)

Plot out rivet hole spacing around flutes, hinges, and other pitfalls. Then drill a straight rivet line.

Match drill framework to skin rivet holes without drilling too close to the edge of a piece.

Set up DRDT-2 with enough pre-load to make a distortion-free dimple. (Thank you VAF!)

Dimpling:

Dimple skin with DRDT-2*

Countersink skin in 4 spots to accept rivets

Countersink framework in 12 spots to accept skin dimples

Dimple frame with pneumatic squeezer (bad idea)

Dimple frame with hand squeezer.

Rivet using:

Bucking bar and gun—visual*

Bucking bar and gun—Blind*

Pneumatic squeezer

Hand squeezer (which turned out better than the pneumatic, even with my weak little girl hands)

Difficult Rivets—Interference with structure*
I have several perfectly mis-aligned holes. Meaning, they look wonderful on top of the skin, but are too close to the hinge brackets to be bucked or squeezed properly. We ground down a bucking bar and tried bucking with marginal success. Then ground the squeezer yoke and dies oval-shaped to give them clearance from the hinge brackets with the squeezer. By no means are they perfect, but OK.

Note: When Van says you “may” move the rear spar rivet line slightly aft to make room for the spar doublers, he means you MUST move it aft, and it has to be more than 1/16”!! Especially near the hinge brackets!

Drilled out a few rivets. Surprisingly few. None of the bucked rivets had to be removed; only a few that didn’t squeeze properly.

Now that I have a finished piece of my own on the wall, I can take a break from figuring stuff out and worrying about assembling & riveting, and begin again with some peaceful, brainless fabrication of parts for the Vertical Stab.  :-D