Builder Assist Program Day 2

07 Mar 2006: 11 hours each. This was day 2 of the builder assist program. We completed the horizontal stabilizer pre-assembly, and the rudder pre-assembly. As before, this was more fluting, grinding, fitting, match-drilling, deburring, and dimpling.








Then, we marked everything using a blue sharpie, and disassembed it all for priming. Included in the price of the builder assist program is priming all the inside surfaces of the empennage with two-part epoxy primer. We hadn't really made a decision at that point on what we planned to do about priming the rest of the airplane, but considering the importance of the empennage to stability and control, the difficulty of ever getting back inside to prime it once it was closed out, and given that it was "paid for," we decided to take the weight hit and go with two-part epoxy.



While the primer was drying, we also started pre-assembly of the elevators and trim tab. This was a long day, but we were already starting to think about finishing in less than four days, so we pushed it. Having only one kit in the shop was really speeding things up!


Here is Mike from Alexander Tech Center showing us how to easily remove strips of the blue protective film using a blunt soldering gun, making it really easy to expose the rivet holes.