Gluing the Rudder Trailing Edge August 20th, 2006
It’s been in the 100’s here for the last few days here, so I haven’t been too inclined to go into the garage and work on the plane.
I finally got around to gluing the trailing edge of the rudder. I bought the fuel tank sealant that comes in a tube dispenser. I quickly realized this was a mistake. I probably used 5% of the material in the tube, and the rest went to waste. If was to do this again, I’d want to buy the 1 ounce bottle instead.
Anyway, the stuff is gooey and nasty. The only way to to this is with a helper and lot of disposable gloves. I got my brother to help, and it wasn’t too bad. He applied the sealant to the wedge, and I smeared it more or less uniformly over the wedge. When we had one side covered in sealant, I turned it over and held it up with one hand while he applied the sealant to the ‘other side’. I used my free hand to smear it.
We then slid the wedge into the rudder and started putting a cleco in every hole.
To keep the clecos and the aluminum angle from sticking to the rudder, I used petroleum jelly (i.e., vaseline) on the surface on the angle, and on the clecos.
Here’s the rudder all clecoed and waiting to cure. There is about half an inch between the topmost hole and the tip of the rudder, so I used a clamp to make sure the skin stuck to the wedge.
