So I’m a little behind in my posting / video editing. With that said, I’m working on getting caught up.
After finally making a trip to the local hardware store, I finally had the right size pipe as well as some “gorilla tape” to help finish up the rolling of the leading edge. Honestly it wasn’t a terrible process, but it was slightly annoying and I ended up using two different size PVC pipes to get a decent fit. Others have commented that the two sheets were not laying flat when they riveted their skins together, but honestly mine turned out decently. Maybe one or two spots were lifting a bit, but decided to leave them as is for now.
Then I moved to the counterbalance and proceeded to mount the lead weight and fold over the skins. Mounting the nutplate was slightly difficult since I don’t have any nutplate jigs. I was hoping that the skins wouldn’t pillow on the counterbalance, however I wasn’t so lucky and ended up having to install a blind rivet in the middle of my counterweight. Oh well.
I talked to a few other builders about the minor dent at the top of the rudder. Basically the advice was to keep moving forward and when I go to put the fairing on I can always fill it a little bit with some micro if I really want to. The skin didn’t tear and non of the ribs were damaged. Just cosmetic damage and I should worry.
It’s funny, looking back when it happened I felt like it was such MAJOR damage, however now in hindsight it’s really pretty minor. Heck, the 172 I’m currently flying has much worse “hangar rash” and it flies just fine.
Chalk it up to being a “first time builder”.