Because the Horizontal Stabilizer had hit a wall  (the nose ribs where on back order) I decided to press ahead with the Elevator. Selecting the electric trim option saved many laborious tasks and probably about 20 hours of work over the manual trim.

As with the Horizontal Stabilizer, the front and aft spars come with a slight bow in them, so it is very important to keep them straight when drilling. I achieved this by clamping them to the sliding table of my table saw. I have read about other builders using angle iron, which would probably work just as well, but I didn't have any.

Time to start fitting the skins on the Elevator. With the forward spar securely clamped to a very flat and straight edge (the sliding table on my table saw), the alignment of the skins was pretty straight forward. Completed drilling the right lower skin. Also fabricated the control horns and attach angles.

Completed the lower left and upper left & right skins. Trailing edges have to be aligned with a piece of wood to help eliminate the tendency to produce a 'wavy' line when riveted. All went well. Longer trailing edge next, followed by tip counterweight ribs.

Finished drilling trailing edge joggles. Marked, fitted and drilled the tip counterweight ribs.

Disassembled the Elevator and deburred all parts.  Finished make all the small parts for the electric trim option and cut holes in the skins for the servo pack.

Started building the trim tab for the Elevator.  Pretty straight forward except for all the "custom" made parts.  The trim tab has many parts that have to be made from raw stock which although not too difficult, is time consuming.

Drilled holes for HS/Elevator hinge, cleaned and deburred and rivet hinge to Elevator.  The edge margins for a 1/8" rivet call for 1/4" which was hard to achieve and still maintain enough travel between the HS and Elevator.  The whole HS / Elevator hinge was probably the trickiest part of the project so far.  It was very hard to keep everything in alignment (3 separate hinges) get all the clearance and edge margins correct and stop it all from moving during drilling.  Hopefully the ailerons on the wings will be easier.  Fitted the Trim Tab hinge, drilled and riveted to Elevator side.  These rivets were very awkward to get at.  I ended up using the squeezer but it deformed the knuckles of the hinge in a few places, but these were easily persuaded back into alignment. The trim tab itself has a slight kink in it caused by the Z-ribs fabricated earlier, these were very tricky to make and are pulling the skins too tightly.  The kink is barely noticeable and is structurally just as strong so I'm not going to loose too much sleep over it.  From what I can tell from other builders, I'm making pretty rapid progress, I decided not to go for "best of show" so I'm prepared to live with a few blemishes.

The riveting went quickly and without any problems.  Using pulled rivets for the tight areas certainly helped matters even though they're not as "pretty", you'd have to look very closely to spot them.  My 2X gun is not butch enough to drive the 1/8" rivets for the control horns so they are going to have to wait until I can get a 3X gun.  I worship the day I decided to get a pneumatic squeezer, they're not cheap, but they make childs play of all the trailing edge rivets, quick and consistent.  I use the squeezer wherever I can.

Finished riveting the hinge to the trim tab side.  Although it would have been nice to use the squeezer, there was no way to get access without modifying the jaws significantly.  Couldn't get a bucking bar in very well either, so ended up using the end of the back-rivet plate, which worked quite well.  Again, the edge margins were pretty close but within specs (3/16" for a 3/32" AN470AD3 rivet).  Spent most of the time working on the electric trim.  With the trim tab in place and level, the servo could be positioned.  Drilled the holes for the mounting bolts and the nut plates and also made the cover plate that will protect the servo.  This was very tricky because of the compound curves involved.