Un-masked

Saturday 23rd February 2008

Cleaned, etched and primed replacement VS-706 and trim tab skin. Sanded runs from trim tab horn parts and re-primed. Countersunk rudder trailing edge wedge, cleaned and etched it. Assembled left elevator for match-drilling of its trailing edge wedge.

Quite a lay-off - over seven weeks in total. There were a number of factors involved. Firstly I thought I would wait for the new parts to arrive before continuing with the priming operation. I want to finish with priming entirely and get the spray booth out of the way before I begin final assembly. When the parts showed up two weeks later, the trim tab skin was damaged. It had a wrinkle in the middle of the top trailing edge caused by someone putting a heavy weight on the middle of the long box in which it came while it was supported at both ends, thereby bending the box and the part. I immediately rang Vans to ask if the part was insured. However, they simply said "we better send you a new one then". Granted, the part is only $22 dollars but the shipping would be closer to twice that. Anyway, the gesture is very much appreciated. Also, I now have another part on which to practice those end-tab bends and make sure my technique is spot on before tackling the part for the third and final time.

After about another two weeks passed with no sign of the new replacement trim tab. I rang Vans to find that they had omitted to send it to me. Presumably, since it was a freebie, it did not go into the conventional order system and this caused the disconnect. They apologised and assured me it would be sent straight away. Finally, after another 2 weeks (about 6 weeks now in total), another trim tab showed up and this one is perfect.

Another delay was caused by a vacancy in a buy-to-let apartment we have down in the north inner-city. This was bought nine years ago and really needed to be re-decorated from top to bottom. We thought we could blitz the job in one weekend but it actually took three weekends with lots of evenings in between.

This time, I decided to prime the inside of the trim tab skin before doing any bending as access will be very difficult once the trailing edge bend is completed and the end tabs bent into place. I masked off the locations for the foam ribs and scuffed them with sandpaper as per instructions. This time, I had the clever idea of just cutting the blue vinyl from these locations and using the remaining blue vinyl as masking - worked reasonably well. However, I went quickly into screw-up mode by forgetting to mask the scuffed areas when it came to the 1st coat of primer. So I now had to mask off the primed areas and use a dremel with a wire brush bit to remove the primer. This left a lot of dirt on the primer. When I washed it off, some of the primer came with it so I gave it 2 extra coats after I got it cleaned and dried. All of this bother could so easily have been avoided.

The only parts left unprimed at this stage are the E-921 gusset, the mounting rails for the trim tab motor, the trim tab hinge and the three trailing edge wedges. The instructions call for these wedges to be match-drilled after much of the riveting has been done but I don't want to wait until that stage so I have decided to go ahead and match-drill them now.