14/10/2007 - Left and Right Elevator bending & drilling

Well the day has come to start bending.  I am glad Bob is coming up to help to be honest.  He also bringing 1/8" metal bar to fit into the trailing edge to stop the break fro crushing the edge.  Blue tack was used to hold it in place.

Apologies not too many pictures today, but a lot of progress was made.

The day starts with bending the right elevator and we follow the instruction in the book.  However this is not too successful and Bob suggests using bar clamps (I have 4 of them) to clamp and squeeze the two pieces of wood together instead of trying by hand.  To get a uniform bend it was necessary to stand the brake on end with the trailing edge pointing down and the elevator leading edge sticking up.  The clamps could then be put on the outside all the way along the edge of the break (hinge side) and then by continually tightening up each clamp, gradually the elevator closed up.  This also meant it was much more precise that just using levers to close the break.  I had been dreading it but it went very well and I am pleased with the result, especially the left elevator (the second one we did) its absolutely spot on.

These clamps are great and we used these to 'squeeze' the wooden bending brake.

Once that was all done it was a matter of fitting the skeleton, match drilling all the skins, horn etc and then finishing, and dimpling.

This was then repeated for the left hand side elevator.  At the end of the day Bob could take the right and left elevator skeleton parts off for priming.  They will be done at the same time as the rudder skeleton already sent to him.