RV-9A: Rudder - 10/29/2005
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 Started working on Rudder Stiffeners
I spent a lot of time reading the plans and looking at the drawing before I finally figured out how to cut these puppies. Van's has put small circular cuts in the stiffeners that are used as marks to draw the cutting lines for the stiffeners. I just used a small ruler and a fine point blue sharpie and marked the cuts to be made. Then I made my cuts leaving the blue mark on the stiffener. There is no mention on the plans on how the stiffeners are to be placed inside the rudder, it shows one side with the lip on the bottom, but you have to guess whether the other side is also lip down or lip up. After looking at a lot other builders websites and reading the yahoo group archives, I found the stiffener lips are placed opposite to each other. Lip up on side and lip down on the other. That way they don't hit each other when the rudder is assembled. Later I realized why Van's left off the instructions as to whether the stiffener lip should go up or down on either side of the rudder. Using the marks on the stiffeners as a guide forces the placement of the stiffeners to be lip-up on one side and lip-down on the other. You ain't gotta' choice! One less thing to worry about.
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 Used the bench sander to finish up the edges
The bench sander is handy tool for rounding and finishing the stiffeners. I took the rest of the blue sharpie line off to finish up.
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 Started laying out the stiffeners on the Rudder skins
Datsalotof stiffeners! I positioned the stiffeners as I cut them.
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 Finished cutting the Rudder Stiffeners
This didn't take as long as I thought it would. When I figured out how to do it, it went pretty fast. The band saw and table sander made it easy.
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 Mark and cut
Van's puts small circular cuts in the stiffener showing where the cuts should be. I just "connect the dots" with a sharpie and a ruler. The kit comes with 8 stiffeners that get cut in half to make 16 stiffeners. The first stiffener was easy, I just used the circle cuts to mark each end. All the other ones are shorter, so I used the first full length stiffener as a pattern for the other stiffeners on the end pointing towards the front of the aircraft.
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