May 24, 2012 (Tailcone)

Assembly of the aft bulkhead is started by pressing the bushings into the attach brackets:

Aft bulkhead partially assembled:

Here's the hinge brackets clecoed to the aft bulkhead:

Aft bulkhead all assembled:

This is a pretty important piece, with a lot of things going on.  It attaches to the rear of the tailbone and will hold the vertical and horizontal stabilizers to the airplane.

May 23, 2012 (Tailcone)

Today I started assembly of the rear of the fuselage or what's called the "tailcone".

This starts with assembly of the frames:

The next step is the fabrication of the skid bracket:

I then prepped all the parts for the aft bulkhead:

May 22, 2012 (Horiz. Stab.)

I started off today by riveting the aft hinges to the trailing edge. The Anti-servo Tabs will eventually be attached to these.

Clecoed in place:

Riveted in place:

The next step was to attach the ribs for the aft skins:

Followed by fitting and clecoing the aft skins:

And riveting in place:

The final steps for the H. S. was to install the upper & lower control horns, temporally install the counter balance arm, and drill and install the counter balance weights:

All finished:

May 20, 2012 (Horiz. Stab.)

Clecoed and match drilled the aft hinges.

Prepped the H. S. skins prior to installation on the H. S. skeleton.

Then I clecoed the skins to the skeleton.

The next step was a riveting experience.

The final project for the day was to match drill the splice plate which will tie the 2 skins together in the middle along the aft edge.

May 17, 2012 (Horiz. Stab.)

Cut the bushings to length and installed the hinge brackets.

The next step was to mark and drill the aft hinges.

May 6, 2012 (Horiz. Stab.)

First thing this morning I spent about an hour attaching the forward and aft ribs to the spar box assembly.

Here's the nearly completed skeleton for the horizontal stabilizer.

May 5, 2012 (Horiz. Stab.)

Well, it was still raining this morning so put a few hours in on the RV-12.

First I fabricated the hinge stops out of 5/16" aluminum tubing, then separated and prepped the aft rib clips.

I then clecoed the spar box assembly back together. Then I riveted the countersunk holes and the inboard spar box ribs.  After that the aft rib clips were riveted to the spar box assembly.

With the time I had left I was able to radius, debur & flute the forward ribs. Also, I deburred & fluted the aft ribs.

Here's a picture of all of the parts ready for assembly.