Elevator progress

I've made a lot of progress on the elevators in the last few weeks, and I'm very close to having them ready to prime.

I fully assembled, drilled, deburred, etc. the structure of the elevators:

After all that was done, it was time to take it all apart:

Elevators inside structure visible

You can see the trim cable inspection panels and where they fit:

Drilling though the steel in those smaller parts was specially annoying:

In the end, while doing countersinking of the rear spars, I finally screwed up badly enough that I'll need a replacement part :(

F@!(*& !!

The solution was easy to figure out with the infinite wisdom of VAF - to use something to back the countersink pilot:

Much nicer results with something backing up the pilot

My joy was short-lived - right after that, as I tried to countersink the trailing edge wedges, the pilot broke from the side loading (there's an angle between the hole and the surface):

Broken countersink pilot :(

My wife glued the templates to the trim tab and trailing edge foam ribs:

Gluing foam rib templates

And that gave us nicely-cut ribs (yet to be sanded):

Foam ribs

Likewise, I trimmed the counterweights to the specified size - working with the bandsaw on lead proved to be interesting - it's much more maleable than it seems, but it heats up a lot, so I had to take many breaks to let them cool off:

In order to minimize post-primer drilling, I took a few steps from later as well - for one, I drilled match-drilled the elevator side of the trim tab hinges.


Timelapse:

Total elevators time: 43.5h