Right elevator is riveted...all that's left for this sucker is rolling the leading edge and bolting on the counterweights. Oh yeah, and drilling the control horn. Oh yeah, and adding the fiberglass tip. Oh yeah, and... Hell, even if you finish 90% of your remaining work every day, there's always 10% waiting for you "tomorrow".
Before riveting the left elevator together, I wanted to make sure the electric elevator trim servo was mounted properly on the access plate and that everything fit together nicely...and that I'd be able to install and remove the plate after riveting it all together. Here's the trim servo with one bracket that needed a hole for the wires.
The attachment brackets needed a lot of trimming and a bit of reshaping to be functional. Here's the servo, permanently attached to the access plate.
Before riveting the left elevator skin onto the skeleton, you have to close the gap just outboard of the trim tab. This is done by bending the metals tabs inward. Not as easy as it sounds. You have to make sure they close perpendicular and flush. Wood blocks and lots of light pounding.
Here's the left elevator getting riveted in the jig.
And here it is, completely riveted, with the exception of the trim tab hinge.
Here's the trim tab. You have to bend both ends of the trim tab just like the elevator thing.
It's tough to see in this picture, but the plans call out a slight upward bend of the lower skin. This accommodates the trim tab's clearing the elevator when it moves. I used Avery's edge roller to give the lower skin a bit of a lip.
After all this, I drilled and riveted the control horns onto the trim tab, and I prepared for riveting the spar into the trim tab. I'm a little confused, though, about how exactly to rivet the spar. The bottom row is what confuses me. The shop heads are behind the spar and are really tough to get at. I might try the longeron yoke, but who knows. I've emailed the lists for help, so we'll see what happens. The irony is that George Orndorff's tape sucks...it doesn't even describe how to do this. So I'm left in the lurch until somebody gives me some advice.
UPDATE: I got lots of advice on this and was told that back riveting the lower spar rivets is the way to go. I agree completely and understand now, but unfortunately I had already bent the trailing edge of the trim tab, which precluded being able to bend it back open far enough to back rivet without over-stressing the trailing edge bend. Several people advised me to just put blind flush rivets in there instead, so I decided just to do that. It's the bottom anyway...