Section 7 is the rudder. I started working on the rudder over this long Thanksgiving weekend and have gotten a good number of hours in. There’s a surprisingly large number of parts in the rudder assembly and the first several steps involve separating parts and deburring.

I do have one small tip when it comes to cutting the stiffeners. The plans have you draw a cut line on each stiffener then trim along the line. Below you can see the cut line on one of the stiffeners.

I nested a 1×2 piece of scrap wood in the bend of the stiffener and carefully cut the first stiffener with the band saw. This resulted in a cut in the 1×2 that served to guide the band saw blade for each subsequent stiffener I cut. I just had to align the end of the stiffener with the end of the 1×2. Since there are Right and Left hand stiffeners, I had a cut on each side of the 1×2 that you can see below. This made quick work of what is normally a tedious job.

After getting all of the parts cut and deburred, It’s time rivet the hinge doublers to the spar

and assemble the rudder skeleton and skin for some match drilling.

After some match drilling, including the trailing edge, It is time to disassemble and debur everything. More on that tomorrow.