Today was a long, but productive day fabricating rudder stiffeners.  The rudder skins now come in two separate sheets of aluminum that are very thin (0.019" thick).  To stiffen the rudder assembly, angled aluminum stiffeners are riveted to the inside of the rudder skin.

Van's just sends you 8 angled aluminum stiffeners which are pre-punched on one side.  These are then cut to make 16 rudder stiffeners.  Van's has taken alot of the guess work out of it by pre-punching the angle cuts that must be made to the stiffener.  More or less, cut from one hole to the next to get your taper cut.

It took me the better part of the day to cut stiffeners to length with the band saw and then clean up the edges and round the corners with a scotchbrite wheel.

The next task was to de-burr all the holes.  Tami came out and helped me take off the vinyl covering on the rudder skins with the soldering gun.  She also is very "project supporting" when I need holes deburred.

Finally, I dimpled the rudder skins with the c-frame.  I purchased a new hammer to use with the c-frame.  It is a 12 oz soft faced hammer.  It has a really nice feel when striking the c-frame giving a definitely noticeable different feel and sound when the dimple has been formed.