So, after the priming was complete, it is time to start final assembly of the rudder. The first parts assembled on the rudder are several reenforcement plates that hold the hardware that attach the rudder to the vertical stabilizer. I referenced the plans and started to rivet the parts together. After riveting two of the three plates, I recognized that I had made a mistake. Below is a picture of what I did.
The mistake is the those green plates should be both the other side of the gray piece. I did not double check the drawing and confused which side of the gray spar the plates should be on. So, to correct this, I had to drill out all of the rivets, move the plates to the back, and then re-rivet the plates to the spar.
This would be super simple, except while drilling out the rivets, some of the holes became enlarged. Since this is a crucial part, I decided to reorder the parts from Van’s Aircraft and try again.
A valuable lesson was learned: double check the plans before riveting something together. A simple glance at the plans would have caught my mistake and saved me the time lost redoing work I had already completed.
N249DA 