Since my Stepdad is still here helping with the build, I decided to finish the Rudder. In order to finish, all we had to do was rivet the trailing edge and roll/rivet the leading edge. I've been putting it off because I wasn't 100% sure how I wanted to do it.....today, I guess I decided!
Section 5.8 of the plans describes how to rivet trailing edges. The trailing edge is riveted with what is called "double flush" rivets. These are standard #3 rivets, but instead of setting the rivet on a flat surface, it is set in a dimple. The result is rivet that is flush on both sides of the Skin. Van's tells you that the rivet will not completely fill the dimple and will look differently than the manufactured head....and it does. It's been described as an "acorn sitting in a dimple". I didn't really know what that visual looked like until I completed the first rivet. Van's also warns about not making the mistake of trying to use a longer rivet to "fill up the dimple". By doing this, the longer rivet tends to bend over instead of setting properly. Additionally, due to the force of driving more rivet material, it can introduce puckering and waviness into the trailing edge.
So, following the directions in the plans, we started in the MIDDLE of the trailing edge. The plans say to backrivet about every 10th rivet just to "set" the rivet and hold everything in place. We deviated from the plans here slightly.....not in procedure, but by means. Instead of back riveting to initially set the rivets, we used the hand squeezer with flush sets. I squeezed the rivet just enough for the flush set (on the shop head side) to just touch the Skin. After setting every 10th rivet, we continued with the remaining rivets by doing the one rivet that was midway between the others already initially set.....alternating back and forth along the Trailing Edge. Once all the rivets on the Trailing Edge were initially set, then we backriveted them (in the same order) to get the double flush result. This process was not very hard, but time consuming. You want to work slowly and constantly check for any deformation of the Trailing Edge. It turned out pretty straight.....well within the tolerance required by Van's.
The video below shows the work completed on the trailing edge.
The video below shows the work completed on the leading edge.
Section Complete