Horizontal Stab and Always Time to Do It Over

Remember that expression, "Never time to do it right, but always time to do it over?"  Fits my experience with the horizontal stabilizer. After days of cutting ribs, gluing, installing and fiberglass-epoxy layup, I was not thrilled to learn that I'd oriented the rear tube 90° out of position:

That bolt in the foreground should be 90° clockwise. Doh!

One thought was to re-drill the tube, but that meant having 'extra' holes, and I didn't want to chance compromising the strength of the part. I decided to cut the foam at each rib about 1 inch from the tube, then drill out the four rivets on one end. That way I could separate the tube, clean it up, re-orient it properly and Bob's your uncle, fiberglass it back almost as good as new. As long as I had it apart, I added vinyl tape to the sleeves for a better fit, too.

Surgery complete, where are those sutures?

Post-op, patient recovering nicely.

Lessons learned:

1. Fiberglass tape sequence matters. Take overlapping into account.
2. My epoxy usage comes out to about .275 grams per lineal inch of fiberglass tape.
3. Gravity is not your friend. When doing a vertical layup like this, be sure the tape overlaps some to help hold it in place. I found that blue painters tape can be helpful.
4. Use a red rag like in the image above to keep your head from being drawn like a magnet to the aluminum (even though both are theoretically non-ferrous).