September 16th, 2020
Page 6-2: Step 2 – 4
Well, I’m not cheering too soon haha. It will be coming apart again to get reburred, but this is its first time together! This was Section 6, Steps 3-5.
Category: Empennage
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Day 5 – Vertical Stabilizer Spar Together!
Clecoed together for the first time Final-size drilling Spar Flanges to #30 More final-size drilling -
Day 4 – Rear Spar – Take 2!
September 15th, 2020
Page 6-2: Step 1 & 2
I just got cleared to start doing work again. I’ve been out since June 24th due to rotator cuff repair. I will say, I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. I got almost back to where I was before my mistake in one hour tonight. Update pictures below! It is looking much better this time.
Checking out the lineup before drilling 
Lots of Clecos! 
Best quality tool I own! 
Drilling and deburring complete! Prepped for drilling holes into the flanges tomorrow -
Day 3 – Rear Spar and Spar Caps Reordered
July 10th, 2020
Page 6-2: Step 4
I’m glad I found my mistake early on in the build. And it reinforces to me the absolute importance of reading sentence by sentence and understanding exactly what they are expecting. Also… Don’t have preconceived idea of what they want either. My first mistake was when I was clamping down the rear spar caps to the rear spar. I totally forgot that I had these clamps in my tool box that I could use.
Cleco Clamps In my haste to get started I just head the rear spar cap against the rear spar and drilled a hole in the middle. I then clecoed that and went on my way. Well little did I know that as I was going along, drilled out material was building up inbetween the two parts, creating a gap. Thus the rear spar and the rear spar caps didn’t truly meet flush like they should have.
Holes are slightly off if you put the spar caps exactly where they are supposed to be My second mistake was drilling the #40 holes with a #30 drill bit. Probably not a huge mistake and I could have just used the 1/8″ rivets, but I want to follow the instructions exactly to the point, as I am pointing to here in this image.
But I did get some work done today! I got the VS-1008 piece completely deburred and I also got some additional clamps that I hope will help out in scenarios such as this.
Irwin Miniature Quick-Grips All in all, I am still very positive about the build, even though this was just the first few steps in the build LOL. I knew this was going to be my down fall, and something I need to change anyways. This is a $49 dollar lesson as I wait for the replacement parts to come in.
This will give me some more time to continue rehab with my shoulder anyways, as doing this work was pretty stinking difficult without the use of my shoulder the way I wanted it. I would use my left hand to basically grab things close by or to push down on parts slightly, but it was pretty useless LOL. Luckily my first physical therapy visit went well today and they were surprised at how well I’ve already progressed just resting at home. So here’s hoping I get through this therapy quickly and fully recover the use of my shoulder as I’ve been missing it dearly for the past year and couple of months since I hurt it.
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Day 2 – Rear Spar & Spar Cap Match Drilling
July 9th, 2020
Page 6-2: Step 2 & 3
Not a ton to write about today. I got the holes match drilled between the rear spar and the spar caps. The only odd thing is that, even with them held firmly together, the shavings from near by holes would cause it to push out some and I didn’t notice until I was almost done. I’ll have to see what I can do to get it flush on both sides. I might have to find a better clamping solution as well as my small wood bar clamps don’t get enough perches to hold the pieces together very well.
Here are some more photos of the spar and spar caps clecoed together.
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Day 1 – Initial Cuts – Vertical Stabilizer
July 8th, 2020
Page 6-2: Step 1
I was cleared by my doctor today to do some very small movement of my shoulder. I didn’t waste anytime getting into the garage to get started on the plane 🙂 I honestly did not use my left arm much but to guide parts through the band saw or to run it through the bench grinder for deburring.
I got the initial cuts done on parts VS-1014 which turned them into VS-1014-L and VS-1014-R. I fitted the deburring wheel to my bench grinder and got the long exposed edges deburrred on all of the vertical stabilizer parts. Hopefully tomorrow, I will get the bits cut for my detailed deburring tool and get those small areas done so I can cleco everything together and start match drilling.
VS-1014s All Cut! 
Before vs After deburring 
The rudder stops all cut out and deburred on the outside edges -
First Build Hour
I just recently had rotator cuff repair surgery so I’m not going to be able to do too much with the build for another month or so. But I did want to go on ahead and get everything organized and ready to go.
I had my boys take all of the parts that I wouldn’t be using upstairs for long term storage. We stored them in reverse order so that I would be able to access parts as I need them.
I also spent some money to buy some organizing units and I split up everything into individual part numbers. It will help me find things down the road. Here are a few pictures to document the progress. I also removed the protective covering from all of the parts so that I would have one less thing to worry about when I start cutting, deburring, etc.
I spent about 4 hours in total doing all of this organization. I need to figure out how I’m going to document the work hours to each of these posts. Luckily I have a few weeks to worry about that. LOL
Harbor Freight 40 Bin Organization Units 
All the rivets in a single 20 bin organization unit 
All future parts stored away upstairs 
Parts ready for work -
Empennage kit has arrived!
As of June 22, 2020, I now have the empennage kit in my possession. I will say there was a little bit of hassle to get it here which was partially my own fault plus that of ABF Freight.
The kit arrived in Oklahoma City and was ready for delivery on Wednesday June 17th, 2020. I called them that day and the lady scheduled me for the following day. She did say she was extremely busy so this could have been the reason for the first misstep.
I worked from home the next day, which was June 18th, 2020. The same lady called me and let me know that it did not go out for delivery because she didn’t get payment from me. She wasn’t expecting the recipient to pay for it so, I get it. She said that if I paid today, it would go out for delivery tomorrow. Now, I had plans to go to Dallas, TX the next day (June 19th, 2020) as I needed to do some maintenance on our rental property down there. I told her I planned on leaving around noon and asked her if it was possible they could deliver it that morning. She said it would not be a problem. So I paid that day and went along my way.
On June 19th, 2020, I waited until 4:45PM when I called them and they said that they had already attempted delivery. I was pretty perturbed at this point since I had not received a call, email, or any notification that they were trying to deliver it. I waited, because I told her I would be here and preferred the shipment to be done in the morning. That was my one and only misstep. I should have clarified with her that I would wait until they delivered, but I preferred to have it delivered before noon. But in my opinion they should have called me to try delivery instead of just assuming I wasn’t going to be there and mark it as “attempted” and move on.
The other misstep on ABF’s part was that the lady said she didn’t feel that they would need a lift gate so she took that off the request and they were only going to send a normal truck. That’s where the driver also said he didn’t want to deliver it because it needed a lift gate to drop it down properly. Either way, I was pretty miffed that they communicated very poorly and weren’t apologetic about it at all.
Lesson learned for next time though… I will be crystal clear on delivery expectations.
The kit is now in the garage! 
No damage so far. This is good! 
The build manual and the inventory checklist. Pen out and start! 
All of the packing paper now removed so I can see more of what’s in there 
External plan view 
3D Schematic 
Inventory complete! My boys actually enjoyed doing the inventory with me! They thought it was so cool to see how many parts there were just in the empennage kit to make a plane function. I was only missing one item, which was E-905. F-1006C, F-1006D, and VS-1005 were all on backorder. I called Van’s and got ahold of Jessica. She noted the missing part and also said that it appeared that those backordered parts were possibly ready to ship. I told her to just ship it all together to save on packing and shipping (hopefully).
I am having shoulder surgery tomorrow (June 24th, 2020) so I won’t be able to work on this for a while which is fine. I want to work with my local EAA chapter and have some more discussions anyways before I start in earnest on the build. I need to figure out what the best option for primer is out there and getting that ordered as well as getting a spray gun. I have a HVLP sprayer, but I don’t think this is the right way to apply it since we just want a very small amount of primer to go out. Either way, I’ll have plenty of time here in the next few days to research this and get caught up.