Making an airplane consists of putting things together and taking them apart a bunch of times. For the elevator, I probably put the whole thing together 4 or 5 times, fitting, drilling, dimpling, etc. The actual assembly and riveting goes very fast.
It's a *lot* like painting. I've heard painting described as 90% prep work and 10% painting. This is pretty much the same. You don't have anything but a pile of parts until the very last, and then it goes together very quickly.
Match drilling the right elevator skin. Under each line of clecos (silver things that look like bullets) is a stiffener. There are some stiffeners on the bench to the right of the photo. Once they are all in place I drill through the skin and stiffener to ensure the hole is correctly sized for the rivet and that the holes exactly match the part that will be installed.
 |
| From Dale's RV Project - Empennage |
This is the right elevator spar. The two square plates are reinforcement plates, and the dark grey part riveted to it is called a nut plate. The nut plate is threaded and allows us to put threaded parts into places we could not get a wrench into. Think of it as a way of permanently attaching a nut to a part we need to bolt. The rod end bearings for the elevator hinge thread into these from the other side. The hinge points are the square slots cut in the front of the elevator skin.
 |
| From Dale's RV Project - Elevator |
