I’ve clecoed the horizontal stabilizer skeleton together for the first time and match drilled all rib to spar holes except the holes that attach the middle pair of rivets to the rear spar. These will get drilled out to #21 later since those are attached with blind rivets.
Another shot so that you can see the rest of my messy garage. I really need to finish moving the rest of the crap from when this was a wood shop around to our new shed.
The skin has been clecoed on to fit the inner ribs (HS-404 and HS-405). I’m pretty impressed with how quickly this structure has taken shape. I only started working on this 3 days ago, and it’s already starting to resemble a real airplane part. This is pretty misleading though since all of the skin holes have to be drilled, everything has to be completely taken apart and deburred, skin and spar holes need to be dimpled, parts have to be primed and then clecoed back together and then finally riveted. I might be 10-15% of the way through the horizontal stabilizer at this point.
By the way, the air powered cleco tool in the foreground is awesome. I found some guy selling several hundred of these surplus on eBay and I was able to pick this up for $25. I highly recommend getting one even if you have to pay several times that price. You’re going to be putting a lot of clecos in and out during the course of the project, and I’ve heard enough other people complain that it’s brutal on your hands. With this tool, it’s as easy as squeezing a trigger.
