Elevator bending angle

[Pirkka]

Did tried search and haven't found angle in the manual (as the section 5 says) but that is not an issue... So I should bent the elevator skins (RV-7) but how much to bend? Should I bent until the angle is so narrow that front rib is against skins or should I leave something "unbent" and press rest of the skins against spar? If leave "gap" how much that would be? Any tips appreciated... Thanks in advance.

PS. Did my worst mistake so far on Saturday: went out from the metal when backriveting rudder stiffeners -- it's actually only cosmetic, but...

[RV7ator]

Crush them flat so that the stiffeners touch the opposite skin at the forward edge. Spring back will open the skins to about the spar height. The real caution is to avoid reducing the trailing edge radius too much. The final radius (called out on the plans) is determined by how deep you tuck the trailing edge into your brake. Approach this gradually; you can press the brake repeatedly to ease into the desired radius.

John Siebold
Boise, ID

[Rivethead]

There is no angle that may be considered the right angle. What you're going for is more of a proper shape. There is a rough drawing of the shape of the trailing edge in our plans. From what I have been led to believe it is important that the control surfaces be as close to the desired profile as possible as this effects control stiffness in the finished plane. So the entire process you're doing is to achieve that end and not necessarily to ?HIT? a particular angle. Imagine that the profile of the trailing edge forms a circle and that the top and bottom skin are tangent lines or rays from that circle. When you're done the skins will still be somewhat open and the riveting of the spar will finish the job. I happen to be picky and wasn't as happy with the shape of my trailing edge when finished so I CAREFULLY touched up the edge with my hand seamer. The picture below was taken as I was touching up the edge. Also notice the dowel inserted along the trailing edge.

[Pirkka]

Thanks for the both replies. They were very useful. I did final bendings and moved on. I found out that the tip that bending should be done a bit further than the final angle was good. As when you open the skins a bit when putting spar there, it does bent trailing edge back a bit and it becomes pretty straight (from leading to trailing edge direction). Instead if you have not bent it enough there will be easily "bump" like in the drawings, but this "negative angle" method seems to really work here.

"Approach this gradually" -- yeah, I used hours to finish my bending. It should be straight forward thing: just bent it to the right angle and it shouldn't take more than few minutes next time.