Rudder skins, Final drilling and Dimpling

Spent the past 2 days in the shop slogging through the rudder. It's sometimes difficult to see dramatic progress in spite of all the hours spent. The rudder is very labor intensive. This time it was fitting the skins using many dozens of clecos, match drilling all the common holes, disassembling it all by removing all those clecos, and then hours deburring all the holes. Although many of the rudder skin holes are drilled to final size and Section 5 in the plans say those holes don't need to be deburred, I wasn't comfortable with Van's claim. When running my finger over many of the final size holes it seemed like many of them had burrs, or were at least rougher then holes that I deburr. So I took the time to deburr those too. It's my plane after all and I don't want to deal with cracks down the road. Then finally with the C-frame dimpling all the holes in the skins and the corresponding internal parts. That took hours. I modified how I used my dimpling table by securely clamping the C-frame to my workbench then placing the table next to it to support the rudder skins. The C-frame seemed much more stable and solid this way when I hit it. I also used a plastic mallet and pressed the arbor down onto the skin before striking it. I felt like these steps helped to reduce the chances of breaking a dimple die, which I did when dimpling the vertical stabilizer skins. I was pleased with the final skin dimples which all looked crisp and consistent and I had no die breakage either. I did stop periodically to inspect them for damage or cracks and found none.

I found a small ding in one of my skins when I removed some blue protective plastic yesterday. It was an annoyance because I'm very careful when working with them but they're awkward, very bendy and vulnerable. No doubt there will be many more dings before its flying. I got to test a repair technique I'd read about on the Van's Air Force forum. It involved covering the opposite side of the dent with some clear packing tape, placing it down flat on a back rivet plate, tape side up. Then using a large metal kitchen spoon and a drop of oil, massage the dent out by pressing down hard on it while moving the spoon back and forth over it. I was surprised how much it reduced the ding. It's still there but greatly reduced. And hopefully any stress risers around that ding are reduced as well.

I also bought a 25' polyurethane compressor air hose off Amazon. The 10' I have it too short for my needs. Although not as durable, I like the light weight of the polyurethane vs rubber when manipulating my squeezer and rivet gun. To go with the hose I bought a mini quick disconnect fitting with a 1/4" female end to screw unto my hose. These small nonstandard size disconnects are tough to find. Neither Amazon or Aircraft Spruce had them but fortunately Cleaveland did.