07/15/2018 Horizontal Stabilizer – Finished Dimpling and Trimmed for Elevator Control Horns (2 Hours)

I completed the dimpling step today by finishing dimpling all the ribs’s flanges.

I went on to complete a task that’s not called for in the text instruction, trimming the flange near the center of the rear spar for elevator control horns. To be honest I had completed missed this from the drawing, until seeing other people talking about it in Youtube videos and forums posts. The drawing doesn’t specify how much of the flange needs to be removed so I sent an email to Van’s support and they replied “Dimension is not critical – it just needs to clear the horns, 1” either side of the center line should do it”. Obviously it’ll be much easier to make the cut now before the left and right spar are riveted together. So I decided to trim about 1 inch from the center line on each side and leaving the flange slightly higher than the reinforcement bar today. I figured if I need to remove more material in the future, I should be easily to file down the flange as needed. After initial cut with the snip, I spent quite some time to file the removed “rectangle” area to final shape.