Whoa, today was a fun day in the shop. After yesterdays matchdrilling of the elevator tips to the elevators, I decided to keep pressing ahead with attaching nutplates to the tips to allow them to be screwed on.

After drilling, I used a throwaway K1000-06 nutplate to drill holes for flush rivets, then got them riveted in place. Here’s an in-progress shot of some nutplate riveting.

After riveting, I used the nutplate as a guide for countersinking the tip.

Then, I screwed the tip in place.

I am REALLY happy with how these turned out.

Here’s the other side of that elevator.

More countersinks for you.

Oh shoot. I ordered fifty K1000-06 nutplates and #6 screws. That clearly wasn’t enough.

Let’s move on to the rudder and vertical.

First up, I need to attach some nutplates to this strap that will hold the rudder counterweight in place.

With the counterweight in place (where’s the picture, dude!?!?!), I moved on to trial-fitting the rudder tip.

After some sanding and drilling, I got the vertical tip clecoed into place and the rudder tip at least nested.

There is quite a big difference in height here, but I hear a lot of people have to work additional layer of fiberglass to make them line up.

Let’s do the nutplate trick on the vertical stabilizer (because that’s exactly how may nutplates I had left.

3.5 hours today. 1.0 against the vertical, 0.5 against the rudder, and 2.0 against the elevators. 36 rivets for each elevator tip, then 16 more for the vertical tip. 52 total. 2 drilled out.