First step in this video is the bending of the longerons. I was worried about how this work work and was pretty cautious on how hard I was hitting them with the mallet. HA! I ended up really beating on these things pretty hard to get the “slight” bend that was necessary. Give it 3-5 good hits with the rubber mallet while pre-loading the end of the channel, then take it out of the clamp and test fit it against the side skins. Honestly after getting more aggressive I did get the proper bend in both of the longerons. (Later on I was quite happy that when I installed the longeron and it fit perfectly!)
Next, its time time to clean up the garage and move my workbenches against the wall to give myself a place to begin the actual assembly. Ended up taking a moment to look around to try to figure out where I was going to store everything. Also realized I needed to get a new set of adjustable saw-horses since the ones I have were not tall enough. (Later on I ended up moving the Horizontal Stabilizer out of the garage and into my basement just so I don’t end up tripping over it or accidentally damaging it. )
Took a little time getting the ribs / bulkheads installed on the bottom skin. Looks like I lost some of the video of me putting the J-channel on the bottom skin and match-drilling, however that was pretty straight forward, just make sure that you can see the blue-line on the J-channel was centered in the holes. Next I install the bell-crank brackets and realize I need to move the sawhorses. I actually have a number of instances where I could have used a second set of hands to move things around more efficiently. But instead I try to do it all myself and am not very graceful. 🙂
I then grab the side-skin that I was temporarily storing in my livingroom and get ready to cleco to the tailcone assembly. I install the J-Channel on the ribs and begin to cleco o the side-skin. While getting everything ready, I realized that I needed another rib/bulkhead installed, however one of the J-channel pieces on the bottom skin was too long. Easy enough to fix with and I’m back to putting the side skin on the tailcone. Once attached, I change the camera angle up to give a better view as I match-drill all the J-channel stiffeners. I did experience the need for a metric-ton of 3/32 Clecos. Even with a cleco in every-other hole, I can see where the “starter” kits you get from the major vendors are just not sufficient for the RV-10. I think I have just over 1000 3/32 clecos and I think that I’m in good shape. At this point I really don’t even care if they are new or old/rusty clecos. They just need to work and hold the parts together. I was using some of my clecos with Pro-seal on them from the rudder / elevators. Doesn’t matter.
I think the only thing looking back I should have done earlier was remove the blue film from the interrior surfaces before I was assembling. Not that it was really a big deal, but I think it would have made adjustments to the J-channel a little easier.